Why Fukushima Made I Stop Worrying And Love Nuclear Power Analysis

In his article, “Why Fukushima made me stop worrying and love nuclear power”, Monbiot (2012) he uses inductive form approach on his fist key argument to support his main claim which stated that there is no ideal solution in the energy technologies but the impacts created by nuclear is smaller than other solutions. He supported his key argument with two observations. First observation is Fukushima nuclear disaster shows that there were no fatal cases caused by exposure to radioactive rays although the reactor explodes and melt down. Second observation shows that the radioactive rays exposed within 10 miles from the Pennsylvania damaged nuclear power plant only 1/80 of the radioactive rays amount is fatal to human. Hence, he based on this two
Although this premise is true but the radioactive pollution will not only leave a severe impact on the land but also affecting the nearby ocean and the contaminated seafood and seaweeds are hidden crisis to human beings. This is proven true in the study conducted by Fisher et al. (2011) which stated that the nearby marine animals are found containing the radioactive elements from the Fukushima nuclear plant’s reactor due to the contaminated water leakage out from the plant. Therefore, when any of the contaminated seafood is unintentionally consumed by human will create a serious impact on human health. At the same time, in this premise he assume that there will be no risk on radioactive hazard on the technician who revisit the damaged nuclear site for reconstruction work. From the study conducted by Holt, Campbell, and Nikitin (2012), it shows an incident which three workers received high level of radiation from the contaminated water remaining inside the plant after two weeks’ times from the disaster occurred. Therefore, both of the examples is pointing that this premise if
This is because this premise only have one sample size’s result and he also assume that this single observation is able to represent the other nuclear power disasters will happen to be the same. In the Pennsylvania nuclear disaster, there are roughly 2 million residents received about an average of 1millirem above the background dose. This is equal to 126 millirem of radiation which equivalent to 1.26 millisieverts of radiation(United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission,2013). To add on, a research from Guttmacher Institute (2000) claim that in a man’s life time the stillbirth risk will increased up to 24% for each 100 millisieverts of radiation he exposed to, while a median lifetime exposure to radiation for men was actually 30.1 millisieverts which brings down the actual risk of stillbirth to 7.2%.Hence, base on the two study mentioned, the man who are affected by the nuclear plant disaster will have a 0.3% higher risk of stillbirth compared to unaffected man. This trend is proved to be true in the analysis by Datesman (2011) which he discovered that right after the first month of the nuclear plant accident in Pennsylvania, the infant death rate of Harrisburg which is a capital just a bit more than 10 miles away from Pennsylvania is three times higher compared to the previous 2 years in the same season. Therefore, all these evident provided are contradicting to Monbiot second premise and so he second premise