Jeong Nam-gu｜Editorial Writer
During the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, I was working as a correspondent in Tokyo. I was in the periphery of the cataclysm in which 20,000 people were killed by the earthquake and tsunami, and 160,000 people left their hometowns due to the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident. Correspondents have visited the vicinity of the accident several times. We were a ‘sample group’ that was difficult to obtain, expected to be exposed to a large amount in a short period of time. We came to the Seoul Atomic Energy Hospital that year, agreed to provide all data on whether radiation was emitted from the body and how many chromosomal mutations occurred, and received a free examination.
Living in a radioactively contaminated area, there is no way not to study about radiation. To get rid of anxiety completely, you have to leave the polluted zone, which is costly. You need a basis for judgment in order to take some risk and make a reasonable cost choice. When I went to cover the area near the nuclear power plant, I wore thick clothes, stayed outdoors only when necessary, and minimized the amount of exposure by minimizing the schedule. For food, even if radioactive substances were detected below the standard level, undetected ingredients were purchased as much as possible from a cooperative for living that discloses all levels. Fortunately, there were no abnormalities in the examination at the nuclear power hospital. However, there were people who criticized the decision to stay in Tokyo with the children for nearly three years after that.
Radiation is emitted when the atomic nucleus of an unstable element becomes stable. damage the cells Life could not live on the primitive Earth because of the radiation. Pierre Curie and Marie Curie, who discovered polonium and radium through radioactive research, both died as a direct or indirect cause of radiation exposure. Unfortunately, humanity has paved the way to recreating a primitive Earth by inventing an artificial nuclear fission bomb. Nuclear power generation is no different from a nuclear bomb if complete containment fails. The 2011 Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Units 1 to 3 accident is an example of this. It disgusts me that those who cried out that ‘nuclear power plants are absolutely safe’ in the name of science still feel no sense of responsibility.
The basic principle of radiation protection , which the International Commission on Radiation Protection ( ICRP ) recommended in 1977 , is ‘Keep exposure as low as reasonably achievable’ ( ALARA ). Radiation management standards are by no means a guarantee of safety. If it is unavoidable, ‘Let’s take the risk of exposure to that level’, and if it is inevitable토토사이트, that level is just an ’emission limit’ that must be accepted. In September 2013, I met Shuntaro Hida (1917-2017), a Japanese doctor who had been treated for 6,000 atomic bomb victims in Hiroshima as a military surgeon. Having seen many patients with ‘Bura-Bura disease’ who felt severe fatigue and fell into asthenia among the radiation victims, he emphasized, “Even if the amount of internal exposure through radioactively contaminated food is small, it has a large adverse effect on the human body.”
The Japanese government’s dumping of Fukushima-contaminated water into the sea is very harmful to the Earth’s oceans. can never be morally justified. Of course, the sea is very large, so it is very likely that tritium that is discarded will not pose a great threat to marine products in Korea’s coastal waters in terms of radioactivity. Even so, it is natural for people to be concerned about the adverse effects of continuing to dump contaminated water into the sea for a long time. The government deserves to start by sympathizing with that anxiety. But it wasn’t. Members of the People’s Power held a sashimi eating show, and Rep. Kim Young-seon did a show of drinking water from a water tank. It’s like mocking those who are anxious in the name of imperfect and soulless ‘science’.
A few days ago, I looked at the results of radiation tests for seafood and agricultural products on the website of Tochigi Prefecture, located inland in the south of Fukushima Prefecture. Cesium was detected at around 20 becquerels per kg in some sweetfish and mountain trout and shiitake mushrooms grown on trees. The reason why cesium is released from sweetfish and mountain trout caught in rivers is that what was released into the atmosphere at the beginning of the nuclear power plant accident fell to the ground, flowed into rivers along with water, and accumulated in the bodies of upper predators through the food chain. The Japanese government allows distribution as ‘safe’ because the radioactivity is below the standard, but it is questionable how many Koreans will eat it with ‘safety’.
It is recommended to high-ranking officials of the government and ruling party who say that it is ‘safe’ because it is below the standard. If you are so confident, you should rather hold a tasting of Fukushima contaminated water and ‘reassure’ the people by standing in a line and doing one-shots one by one. Do you have the confidence to do so?