Radiation Protection after 3.11: Conflicts of Interpretation and Challenges to Current Standards Based on the Experience of Nuclear Plant Workers

Paul Jobin
U Paris-Diderot, CEFC Taipei
pauljobin1@gmail.com

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Social construction of invisibility or epistemic constraints?

Since the Fukushima nuclear disaster (hereafter 3.11), nuclear workers have been engaged in the “emergency work” (kinkyū sagyō) at Fukushima Daiichi without clear time limits, meaning the “emergency” could last for decades. This problem has been emphasized by the NGOs engaged in negotiations with the Ministry of Health and Labor. These activists aim to defend the rights of the workers involved in the cleanup of Fukushima Daiichi and of those hired for the decontamination work in Fukushima prefecture. Some workers have come from Fukushima to join the meetings in Tokyo, bringing a dose of reality to discussions that might otherwise lack the proper context. The criticism of these NGOs and workers deals mainly with various aspects of the current working conditions.

Some of the problems addressed are similar to those faced by contracted nuclear plant (hereafter, NP) workers even before 3.11, like the practice of modifying dosimeters to minimize radiation readings—since employers are not obligated to propose alternative jobs when the maximum dose has been reached. There is little pressure to change this situation, since the multiplication of contractors allows the big players, like TEPCO, Tôshiba, Hitachi, GE, etc., to evade any responsibility over such practices. Another major issue is the lack of health insurance or regular labor contracts. Other problems are specific to the post-3.11 context. As regards radiation protection, the biggest problems are as follows:

– The Ministry has decided to deny health follow-ups to workers exposed to a cumulative dose below 50 mSv for external radiation exposure (only those above this dose will receive a one-year cancer test);

– TEPCO declared that there would be no records for internal radiation below 2 mSv;

– There is so far no systematic dosimetry nor health follow-ups for the people employed—mainly on a temporary basis—in the “decontamination” work on the various hot spots of Fukushima prefecture.

The NGOs stress that these decisions regarding radiation protection—and lack of decision regarding labor contracts and decontamination work—seem inconsistent with the declaration made by the government and nuclear safety authorities of “learning from the disaster.” Japanese government experts have argued that, below a cumulative dose of 100 millisieverts a year, the effects of radiation are negligible, basing this assertion of “safe levels” on the recommendations of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the International Commission on Radiation Protection (ICRP), and on the conclusions of epidemiological surveys. These surveys have been conducted on various cohorts; some are related to nuclear disasters (like Hiroshima-Nagasaki survivors, Chernobyl liquidators, or victims of the fallout from nuclear testing), while others refer to the regular occupational exposure of medical radiologists and nuclear installation workers. This large corpus and its interpretation by the IAEA and the ICRP have shaped the current standards of radiation protection.

Labor activists point out that the existing epidemiological surveys posit no safety threshold, either at 100 mSv or at any other level.  Therefore, the decision to eliminate data below 2 mSv is certainly questionable, particularly since keeping such records not only poses no great difficulty, but could also provide “precious data” on low-dose radiation.  Challenges to the current standards of radiation protection are not limited to occupational exposure, however, but apply to the population as a whole. Fukushima “cleanup” workers can therefore be viewed as sentinels of a potential epidemic of radiation-related diseases. It is thus imperative that attention be given by post-3.11 Japan to these workers.  And this raises the question: What importance have STS and disasters studies given to labor issues?

The total number of NP workers who have been compensated for occupational hazards is just 14, which is extremely low compared to the entire labor force for a single year (over 80,000 in 2009). If we exclude the eight workers who died of acute irradiation after the Tokaimura and Mihama accidents (1999 and 2004), there are only six workers who have been recognized for occupational cancer due to radiation exposure: four cases of leukemia, one myeloma and one lymphoma. For these cases of cancer, the total cumulative doses of radiation were between 40 and 100 mSv. Three of them were certified only after a heated public battle. Therefore, as has also been shown in the case of NP workers in France and the United States, and for African uranium mine workers, many workers who might have developed cancer will never appear in the public health data, but remain invisible.

STSers might thus qualify the decision to suppress such low-dose data as a “social construction of invisibility”. Hecht (2013), for example, sums up the situation well, saying that this systemic invisibility implies greater and unrecorded exposure of the true collective dose with few resulting illnesses becoming “occupational diseases”. Combining this rather critical STS approach with a pragmatic sociology of criticism, I think it would be interesting to further examine the arguments of both the Ministry and the NGOs (ongoing fieldwork), as well as criticism within the nuclear establishment before and after 3.11.

The authors of the major epidemiological studies related to nuclear plant workers, when asked, confirmed that their results could not be interpreted as minimizing the risks of doses below 100 mSv. As concerns the current standards of radiation protection, they stress the epistemic constraints inherent to epidemiology and suggest the tendency of institutions like the IAEA to present the results so as to downplay the risks.  The conflicts of interpretation between Japanese government experts and activists thus reflect a larger debate, at a global level, within the community of epidemiologists and radiation specialists. This debate needs to be considered within the longue durée of the controversy over low-dose exposure, particularly in regard to its evolution after Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl. For example, did these disasters induce the modification of ICRP standards in 1990 (which established the current framework)? To what extent has 3.11 created a new context that could lead to the further modification of current standards?

Another global event in the long history of “low-dose” radiation

The Fukushima nuclear disaster cannot be understood solely within the context of Japan, but must be regarded as part of the global controversy over low-dose radiation.  I have therefore tried above to capture some important points of the debate in Japan, and how the apparent contradictions of the Japanese government mainly reflect the dominant international paradigm for radiation protection norms and their epidemiological basis. Or in other (STS) words, the “hybrid forum” between experts and citizens in post-3.11 Japan cannot but be intimately interconnected with the 50-year-old controversy on the unknowns of low-dose exposure for cancer and non-cancer diseases—not to mention the unknown unknowns of mutagenic disorders. The sad irony for post-3.11 Japan and the citizens of Fukushima is that the currently dominant radiation protection model is still based mainly on the legacy of Hiroshima-Nagasaki rather than that of Chernobyl. This is a double irony: first, because this model harkens back to the founding trauma of postwar Japan; and second, because it is based on the first nuclear bomb tests rather than the first “level 7” nuclear power plant disaster. WHO/IARC has produced conclusions that could challenge that model, but so far, they have been disregarded by UNSCEAR itself, as well as by the ICRP’s governing committee.

Any examination of the controversy over nuclear energy in action involves dealing with sources of imperfect reliability.  The obligation to communicate with the public can compel scientists to oversimplify their results, since scientific output is generally complex and hence difficult to explain.  The continuous lobbying of the “nucleocrats,” with its strong bias in favor of their industry, has provoked the radicalization of the antinuclear critique, particularly in the aftermath of disasters like Three-Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.  Therefore, to observe the nuclear debate in action, social scientists and journalists must contend with lies and half-explanations, intentional or not, and hence a part of the unknowns, intentional or not.  On the other hand, sociologists must also accept their own limitations to capture the constraints of sophisticated epidemiological surveys, characterized by huge cohorts and long research periods. These epistemic constraints should not, however, impede the sociologist from hazarding some fundamental questions, such as the following: Why has epidemiology become the main reference for radiation protection standards? Why should we wait to have human cohorts of man-made disaster victims such as Hiroshima-Nagasaki, Chernobyl and Fukushima? In that sense, epidemiology looks rather like a post-mortem science. Morbidity would be a better index, but so far, most countries (including Japan) lack national cancer registries.  Why not instead give more attention to animal experimentation and toxicology as a proactive preventive tool as regards the effects of low doses on human health?  Through such questions, STS and disaster studies may bring a significant contribution to the debate.

Paul Jobin  is Associate Professor in the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Paris Diderot, and Visiting Director of CEFC Taipei (French Centre for Research on Contemporary China, Taiwan Branch). His research focuses on industrial pollution in Japan and Taiwan.