Navy sailors have radiation sickness after Japan rescue

http://nypost.com/2013/12/22/70-navy-sailors-left-sickened-by-radiation-after-japan-rescue/

by SuperChihuahua • 13 years ago

181 156 13 years ago

fidotron• 13 years ago

Of all groups you'd hope to be able to detect and protect their staff against radiation, wouldn't the US Navy be fairly near the top of the list?

Much as TEPCO may be at fault over the actual reactor the sailors being exposed unnecessarily sounds more like Naval negligence.

gwern• 13 years ago

Yeah. It does say that

By the time the Reagan realized it was contaminated and tried to shift location, the radioactive plume had spread too far to be quickly outrun. > “We have a multimillion-dollar radiation-detection system, but . . . it takes time to be set up and activated,” Cooper said.

But... if you're on the coast helping deal with the tsunami damage like them and then a nuclear disaster starts, setting it up & activating it seems like a priority task.

rgbrenner• 13 years ago

CBS - March 2011: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/radiation-detected-on-us-warship...

The U.S. Seventh Fleet said Monday it had moved its ships and aircraft away from a quake-stricken Japanese nuclear power plant after discovering low-level radioactive contamination.

CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports that there were two separate radiation exposures on the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan. The first was to air crews who were swabbed upon returning from search and rescue (SAR) missions, 17 of whom were found to have received the equivalent of a month's radiation and had to be decontaminated.

The second exposure occurred when the carrier's shipboard alarms went off. Since the Reagan is nuclear-powered, it has sensors to detect radioactivity, said Martin, and those went off as soon as the radiation levels went above the naturally-occurring background.

...

The aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan was about 100 miles offshore when its instruments detected the radiation. The fleet said the dose of radiation was about the same as one month's normal exposure to natural background radiation in the environment, and no one was exposed to levels that would have made them sick, reports CBS News correspondent Celia Hatton.

The power plant and its plume are south of Sendai, so as long as the wind doesn't shift, the Reagan can stay out of the plume and still be in position to conduct SAR missions.

stcredzero• 13 years ago

During the height of the Cold War, US Navy ships were equipped with a "wash down" system to enable operations after sailing through nuclear fallout. I'm surprised to learn that no means of detecting radiation in the drinking water was thought of back then. Then again, many of those systems were thought of as a way of continuing to operate for just a few weeks more. Many of those scenarios would have included the end of civilization.

lukateake• 13 years ago

Out of related curiosity, weren't there efforts to ban Geiger counters in the US post-9/11? Were any laws enacted?

tzakrajs• 13 years ago

Negligence triumphed over excellence this time...

mateodelnorte• 13 years ago

As the reactors have now dumped thousands of tons of nuclear runoff water into the ocean which then drifts to the North American West Coast, is this not something we should be much more aware of and acting to protect against?

Is the US West Coast at danger of increased incidence rates of radiation related illness?

anon1385• 13 years ago

Is the US West Coast at danger of increased incidence rates of radiation related illness?

No.

cdash2• 13 years ago

The answer is no, it is not even close to something we should be worried about.

StavrosK• 13 years ago

Is that because it's going to be diluted to unnoticeable levels even near the origin?

stan_rogers• 13 years ago

Unless, of course, you're a homeopath. On a slightly more serious note, I would expect to see a variety of illnesses occurring at a statistically ordinary rate around the variously-projected times of arrival to be blamed on radioactive seawater regardless of the actual concentrations (which will probably be in the high-C, or incredibly powerful because it's incredibly weak, homeopathic dilution range).

zequel3• 13 years ago

Remember the US used to do multiple nuclear detonation tests off Pacific islands after WWII. The Pacific Ocean has a lot of water to dilute the effects.

clavalle• 13 years ago

We've been dumping far worse radioactive waste in the Pacific for years.

elleferrer• 13 years ago

A failed multimillion-dollar radiation-detection system. Why didn't they have this activated?

"The toxic seawater was sucked into the ship’s desalinization system, flowing out of its faucets and showers — still radioactive — and into the crew member’s bodies."

skriticos22• 13 years ago

They could have sidestepped the whole issue with a simple reverse-osmosis water filter. Somehow I get the impression that they did not think the ABC (edit: CBRN) thing through.

JshWright3• 13 years ago

A "simple" reverse-osmosis system?

A Nimitz class carrier can produce somewhere in the neighborhood of 400,000 gallons of desalinated (potable) water a day. Desalination is very energy intensive, but energy is something that a nuclear powered carrier has plenty of. There are obviously some consumables involved, but it's mostly just energy, and lots of it.

RO, on the other hand, requires a lot of high quality, small pore filters and membranes that need to be cleaned and changed regularly. RO systems have dramatically lower throughputs than desalination systems of similar size. An RO system capable of producing 400,000 gallons/day (especially one capable of filtering radioisotopes that are (while larger than a water molecule), still quite small) would be very large, and very maintenance intensive.

But hey... you're probably right... The folks who designed the potable water infrastructure for the Nimitz class aircraft carriers were probably idiots...

ChristianMarks3• 13 years ago

It was much worse than was reported. An online forum of nuclear engineers (I may still have the link) was the most informative source of news about the disaster at the time. EDIT: found the link. http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?s=8b5b840e5e9217...

scotty797• 13 years ago

I hope I won't offend anyone by saying that some of the reported health problems after radioactive disaster are usually exaggerated to get reparations.

ChristianMarks3• 13 years ago

It's only an assertion without specific evidence. The threads linked above run for tens of thousands of pages and form an important part of the historical record.

Alex_MJ3• 13 years ago

It's a two way street - they're usually dramatically downplayed by authorities and anybody who would otherwise have to pay. If you're not loud and exaggerated, nobody with any ability to do anything listens and powerful people actively want you to not be heard.

For illustration, the official number of deaths attributed to the Chernobyl disaster is 31.

coldtea4• 13 years ago

And I hope I don't offend anyone by saying that most of the numbers reported after a radioactive disaster are BS spin in order for the company/state to save face.

forktheif• 13 years ago

Wikipedia says the USS Ronald Regan has a total crew of 5,680.

How statistically significant is 70 people out of 5,680 suffering serious health problems over 2.5 years? I'm guessing that most people on board were fairly young and in good health.

skriticos22• 13 years ago

Radiation overdose is happy to cause you all kind of cancer 50 years down the road. Having been overexposed is really not something you want, even if you don't show symptoms so quickly. The psychological pressure on these people alone must be maddening.

Imagine waking up every day for the rest of your life and wondering if you have cancer today? Not good..

Edit: and let's not talk about the increased likelihood of disfigured offspring.

scotty797• 13 years ago

Imagine waking up every day for the rest of your life and wondering if you have cancer today? Not good..

30% of us will have it at some point, also you have chance 1 in 1000-2000 that you'll die next year.

lafar6502• 13 years ago

You're being rational again. Stop!

pagekicker• 13 years ago

Not the most credible publication, and plaintiff's attorneys are clearly the primary sources for the article.

CookWithMe• 13 years ago

At the TC Disrupt Europe hackathon, there was one team that build a hardware/software hack to crowdsource radioactivity data / warnings. Basically, a Geiger counter attached to your computer that sends readings to a server.

I think it was a really cool hack and one of my favorites, but it didn't go anywhere with the jury (I guess no business model and all :) ).

http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/26/open-radioactivity-warning-...

http://techcrunch.com/video/open-radioactivity-warning-syste... (Video)

zequel3• 13 years ago

This is why I wouldn't let my kids EVER enlist. The government has no regard for its enlisted. Doesn't take a genius to think our navy would be in harm's way during a RADIOACTIVE DISASTER. Reminds me of when soldiers were being electrocuted in showers in Iraq because of totally incompetent contractors wiring electricity near the showers.

joenathan• 13 years ago

Reminds me of when soldiers were being electrocuted in showers in Iraq because of totally incompetent contractors wiring electricity near the showers.

The details of which are the showers needed water pumps,and the water pumps were not properly grounded.

JanezStupar• 13 years ago

Sure, better let somebody else's kids take care of the shitty work.

I agree wholeheartedly.

lostlogin5• 13 years ago

There is, of course, the better option. Invade less people and spy on less people and then the number of people needed and the danger they face is decreased. Additionally, using the military as a social welfare system may not be the great system some think it is. My perspective is skewed however, as being a New Zealander the threat level is zero (except from our so-called allies, who have bombed us in the past - thanks France).

alan_cx2• 13 years ago

"Sure, better let somebody else's kids take care of the shitty work."

Bullshit. That was never implied, let alone said, you simply made it up.

ams61102• 13 years ago

Because incompetent electricians never cause death anywhere but in military combat zones?

zequel3• 13 years ago

Umm, most electricians, I imagine, know how to ground a pump. Also, it wasn't isolated (http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/05/28/soldier.electrocutions/inde...). There were 12 electrocutions. After the first one, you would think there'd be an inquiry.

notdrunkatall2• 13 years ago

I was in the Army for a few years and recently got out. The Army is considered to be the service which is the least concerned with its service members.

That said, the Army most certainly DOES have regard for its enlisted. When things like this happen, bad PR follows. Bad PR is bad for a variety of reasons, one of which being that it makes recruiting more difficult. People will be much less likely to join an organization which doesn't care about them, and would thus require more incentives to do so, incentives which cost money. Two: soldiers, airmen, etc go through a pretty intensive training process that lasts several months at a minimum, and that training isn't cheap. By the time you're a full-fledged member of your respective service, your service has a lot of money invested in you, and the more advanced in your career you are, the more valuable you are to them. Soldiers cost more money than you imagine. Three: morale in the military is of paramount importance. Without good morale, operations break down. If a group of soldiers feel that their leadership doesn't care about them, morale quickly goes into the toilet, and that has all sorts of detrimental and pervasive effects.

When I was in the Army, I got sick of having to always go to another meeting about another program that, should we need it, was available to us. Everything from PTSD counseling to going outside of your chain of command if necessary to financial counseling to healthcare to complaining about the food, barracks, or what have you - there were channels galore to address grievances. They not only create these programs, but they force you to be aware that they exist. These aren't programs created just for show; they're programs which are created to be used.

This isn't the Vietnam Era. The military is an all-volunteer force, and unless the draft comes back, it can't afford to not care about its members. In an organization of many millions of people who constantly deal with difficult, dangerous things like this, incidents will occasionally occur, but they are the exception, rather than the rule.

lostlogin5• 13 years ago

Thank you for your comment, hearing from someone involved in these things is excellent so please keep commenting. It's the insider perspectives that makes HN great IMHO. I've just come to this thread after reading the below link on sexual assaults within the military (and yes, I'm way behind on my reading). Do you have any thoughts on it? How can it go in challenged and unaddressed when courses are being offered on trivial things like financial planning? And the PR angle you mention should, at a minimum, have some influence. http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21588131-can-new...

justin663• 13 years ago

This isn't the Vietnam Era. The military is an all-volunteer force, and unless the draft comes back, it can't afford to not care about its members. In an organization of many millions of people who constantly deal with difficult, dangerous things like this, incidents will occasionally occur, but they are the exception, rather than the rule.

I'm curious, is it your view that the Army dealt well with the people who had Gulf War syndrome? (or whatever we're calling it)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War_syndrome

I had a cousin go to war very healthy and come back sick and his experience getting treatment wasn't exactly great. It's nice to think that we're not living in the Agent Orange days anymore but I wonder if the government is really any less inclined to stonewall sick vets whose problems go against the official narrative than they used to be.

edit: you're right that it's important for retention to have good PR and make it look like there aren't serious problems. Damaging the credibility of sick people seeking help is one way the DoD does that.

alan_cx2• 13 years ago

These carriers are the most powerful, expensive war asset any nation state has. The weakest, most vulnerable link is the soft fleshy things on board. Yet, they are the most essential component of the system. You cant replace them at sea, you cant replace or fix parts, they are finite and vulnerable. No people, no carrier. Therefor carrier crews are probably some of the best looked after people in the forces. Perhaps not out of humanity, but to protect that vital asset.

I'd go further. I would wager that a US nuclear powered carrier is one of the safest places on earth. After all, it is built to fight in an all out nuclear war and hopefully survive. Perhaps be the last hope if the mainland was devastatingly attacked. It can't possibly be that if its crew are, well, dead.

Also, carriers are kind of isolated. They are societies in themselves. The captains are probably more attached and sympathetic to their crews than many other parts of the military.

hindsightbias• 13 years ago

The Navy has been having a lot of problems with their officers:

http://www.navytimes.com/article/99999999/CAREERS/302050309

USS Enterprise captain relieved: http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/01/04/navy.videos/

USS Stennis Captain and his boss get into a biggest dick contest: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/27/us/rear-admiral-charles-m-...

Pacific commanders: http://nation.time.com/2013/10/03/second-warship-commander-r...

floodcow• 13 years ago

Sad story and and it pisses me off that so many countries denied the carrier to dock up.

markdown3• 13 years ago

it pisses me off that so many countries denied the carrier to dock up.

Why is that? Countries that don't have the technical expertise to judge how dangerous it could have been for their people are absolutely right to have prevented them from docking.

Their only loyalty is to their own people, as it should be. As long as they don't have the expertise to verify that their is no risk to their own people, they should default to GTFO.

Do you think the US would allow a shipload of people with the SARS coronavirus or Ebola to dock at one of their ports?

VLM• 13 years ago

"The levels were incredibly dangerous and at one point, the radiation in the air measured 300 times higher than what was considered safe, Sebourn told The Post."

This doesn't mean anything, its technobabble. How many REM or mSv total exposure?

"I said something complicated and science-y sounding, so you are supposed to be scared right now".

The biggest misfortune is they may even accidentally be correct, just completely incompetent about it.

A big epidemiology problem is identifying the actual cause by symptom, and avoiding the assumption that participation in something big and scary therefore means all problems must be caused by big n scary. Some goofball tipping over a barrel of solvent in the maint bay could cause many cancers later, and is marginally more likely.

platz• 13 years ago

Amazing how you think your claim is better informed than those from a primary source. You're right, the mystery solvent must have been it.

yapcguy2• 13 years ago

You can't argue with some people, perhaps like the original poster.

Even if figures and readings are produced, some will talk about bananas, flying in an aeroplane, and background radiation.

The biggest joke of all has been how the "safety limits" of different types of radiation were all magically raised after Fukushima.

Turing_Machine• 13 years ago

A report as spun by lawyers and the New York Post is a "primary source"?

"Considered safe" for how long? For continuous life exposure? For the length of time it takes to make a medical X-Ray? It doesn't say.

The OP is right. There is zero useful information in that statement.

cpleppert3• 13 years ago

I'm a little confused here, why are the sailors on the aircraft carrier a hundred miles off the coast suing and not the helicopter crews or the sailors on the destroyers that got closer?

People are bashing the article not because it is from the NY Post but because there is a zero evidence that being on a ship a hundred miles away was more dangerous than actually being at the site or in tokyo. The article is filled with all kinds of misunderstandings about radioactivity that are accepted wholesale by the reporter to drum up a good story.

marze• 13 years ago

Well, I wouldn't want to walk around outside with levels at 300 times what is "considered safe".

Japan is just lucky that 95% of the radioactive release from the meltdowns was blown out over the ocean, otherwise a much larger fraction of their island would have become useless for agriculture. If the earthquake occurred during the fall, the winds would have been generally off the ocean.

glenra3• 13 years ago

Well, I wouldn't want to walk around outside with levels at 300 times what is "considered safe".

Wouldn't that depend on how many orders of magnitude of safety margin went into deciding what is "considered safe"?

throwaway_yy2Di2• 13 years ago

Here's numbers and a primary source [0]:

"For perspective, the maximum potential radiation dose received by any ship's force personnel aboard the ship when it passed through the area was less than the radiation exposure received from about one month of exposure to natural background radiation from sources such as rocks, soil, and the sun."

Meaning ~300 uSv, or three orders of magnitude short of acute radiation poisoning [1].

"Using sensitive instruments, precautionary measurements of three helicopter aircrews returning to USS Ronald Reagan after conducting disaster relief missions near Sendai identified low levels of radioactivity on 17 air crew members. The low level radioactivity was easily removed from affected personnel by washing with soap and water. They were subsequently surveyed, and no further contamination was detected."

(edit) By the way, [0] says the carrier was 100 miles from Fukushima at the time. Overlay that with the calculated I-131 dose map [2] (from [3]) (I-131 is the largest early dose component); it makes it really hard to believe any of these claims.

The paper [3] is relevant too: it shows off the ability to measure internal I-131 dose, long after the fact. And claims that people far closer to the disaster, with presumed far higher radiation exposures [2], are relatively safe.

[0] http://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=59065

[1] http://xkcd.com/radiation/

[2] (figure only) http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/120712/srep00507/fig_tab/sre...

[3] (full paper) http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/120712/srep00507/full/srep00...

moocowduckquack5• 13 years ago

If any of them have manage to ingest any of the snow, then they could be subject to long term internal exposure and depending on the type of source, it could be very difficult to scan for.

jrockway3• 13 years ago

It's the New York Post. Don't trust a word it says.

cpleppert3• 13 years ago

Even worse:

>“We were probably floating in contaminated water without knowing it for a day and a half before we got hit by that plume,” said Cooper, whose career as a third-class petty officer ended five months after the disaster for health reasons. The toxic seawater was sucked into the ship’s desalinization system, flowing out of its faucets and showers — still radioactive — and into the crew member’s bodies.

Toxic seawater a hundred miles offshore???? You can't make up anything more ridiculous.

Natsu• 13 years ago

This source is... less than reliable as they have no idea what they're talking about. It's not hard to find high school students with a better grasp of this subject than this reporter, sadly. Apparently there are still many sources that have yet to figure out that things like dosage, length of exposure and type of radiation matter quite a bit, though oddly enough, it seems like many would be more likely to understand this if it were ordinary toxic chemical exposure.

That said, I wouldn't weigh things too heavily either way, just because these folks are breaking the news. I very much doubt we have the whole story here and I would prefer not to weigh in until all the information is out. Other commentators on HN have noted that this was a nuclear carrier, so there should be proper records of their exposure (not to mention alternate routes of exposure...) which should be properly evaluated before rushing to judgement here, but there are simply too many possibilities to sensibly evaluate them all without more information.

For example, the article makes it sound like they were exposed to radioactive iodine (due to the thyroid conditions), something I would have expected the carrier to detect, and for which we have reasonable counter-measures (iodine pills). I do not have any insight into what went wrong, but I would focus my investigation on their records of exposure, any treatments, etc. My gut tells me that someone screwed up here, but we lack information sufficient to determine who, and everything is suspect.

That aside, radiation sickness is a terrible thing, and hope they are able to recover.

nevinera• 13 years ago

Tokyo Electric Power also knew that radioactivity was leaking at a rate of 400 tons a day into the North Pacific, according to the lawsuit and Japanese officials.

This was my favorite line.

dubfan• 13 years ago

Wow, I didn't realize you could weigh radioactivity!

tasty_freeze• 13 years ago

This story may or may not be accurate, but anything which comes from nypost is suspect.

melling• 13 years ago

We're either a one decade or two from having the necessary robotics technology needed to keep humans out of harm's way in these situations.

http://singularityhub.com/2013/12/20/nasa-unveils-valkyrie-a...

It's really up to us if it's going to be 10 years or 20.

Alex_MJ3• 13 years ago

We already can make simple ones, it's a matter of radiation shielding. They don't have to be huge expensive humanoid ones. Robots were used in the Chernobyl cleanup 25 years ago although they ended up getting fried from the radiation. I haven't done much research on the topic of what exists today regarding workarounds for electronics in radioactive environments (if someone has domain knowledge, please tell!), but I suspect we could fix that.

For some interesting history, look up "Bio-Robots" to see how the Soviet Union dealt with the disaster. Basically they sent up humans in heavy lead suits for no more than 45 seconds at a time. Run up, get three or four shovelfuls (they were clearing radioactive debris from the roof), get out.

Qworg• 13 years ago

There is much more to it than getting hardened electronics. For example, I was talking with some Westinghouse engineers and the biggest problem with the robots at Fukushima were the cameras. The radiation crazes the lenses and you become blind.

Search and rescue is a hard problem and is terribly underfunded. It is also funded in a way that makes long term improvements hard. There is very little money until there's a disaster, then there is a ton of cash you have to spend right now.

ChristianMarks3• 13 years ago

See the end of

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=711577&page=4

on why it isn't entirely straightforward to send in a robot.

wissler2• 13 years ago

A Geiger counter is a simple, inexpensive device, and several should be present at all significant military installations and turned on at all times. Why wasn't that the case here?

Daniel_Newby2• 13 years ago

It was. The Reagan is nuclear-powered and is capable of carrying nuclear missiles (and quite possibly was at the time). Unless Navy planning has entirely rotted away, that ship was plastered with radiation detectors, crewed with people trained for nuke decon, equipped with NBC (nuclear/bioweapon/chemical weapon) protection suits, and supplied with potassium iodide tablets for thyroid protection.

wissler2• 13 years ago

Then what really happened here?

joshvm• 13 years ago

"Tokyo Electric Power also knew that radioactivity was leaking at a rate of 400 tons a day into the North Pacific, according to the lawsuit and Japanese officials."

I'm sorry, what? What does that even mean? 400 tons of.. Uranium? Water? Pure radioactive essence?

This article is shocking on many levels, but the lack of journalistic standards is appalling.

nobody_nowhere• 13 years ago

We're talking about the NY Post! It would be more surprising if it exhibited any standards at all.

jrockway3• 13 years ago

They have standards. They pick a Tumblr at random and say, "I bet we can have higher journalistic standards than that guy." And 50% of the time, they're right!

glenra3• 13 years ago

400 tons of slightly radioactive coolant water, I believe. Or of groundwater that had been mixed with the slightly radioactive coolant water.

Journalists don't seem to realize the more water there is, the less harmful it is per unit volume, or that the sea rapidly dilutes it further into harmlessness.

There's a little more detail on the claim here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/20/fukushima-radioacti...

AnotherDesigner• 13 years ago

The nuclear apologists are out in full force today.

I love how you guys, mostly computer programmers, are so much more informed than experts in nearly every other field of science existing. It must be amazing to be that smart.

haimez• 13 years ago

As long as you're going to use amorphous group affiliations to create an ad-hominem attack, let me do the same: "AnotherDesigner"

sitharus2• 13 years ago

It is amazing, but the diodes down my left side hurt all the time.

cheeseprocedure• 13 years ago

Even someone with an anti-nuclear stance should look at an article whose primary source is an attorney suing TEPCO and think "this is not adding anything valuable to the conversation."

mikeash3• 13 years ago

Er, the opinions expressed by the "nuclear apologists" generally line up with those of experts in the field.

It's the fools who talk about "400 tons of radiation" who are committing the sin of hubris in thinking that they know more than the experts.

lostlogin5• 13 years ago

If you want an independent opinion upon the pros and cons of disbanding my field of work, don't ask me.

harshreality• 13 years ago

There is no hard data in the original article.

Useful information that could have been included: Actual radiation measurements, with units. Specific location of the ship over the timeline. What radiation the Navy and the ship in question knew about, and when (news reports indicate the USS Reagan nearby knew very early on when radiation exceeded background radiation since as a nuclear vessel it had good radiation sensors). And, since some of the claimants are claiming thyroid problems, whether the navy issued iodine tablets to sailors in the area, since that's a well known and practically risk-free preventative measure against radioactive iodine uptake. Hell, the standard navy rations probably have supplemental iodine. Table salt often does.

You might also be interested in researching how much radiation is released into the atmosphere from coal plants, and how many health problems are caused by all sorts of conventional energy sources, coal, burning fuel, pollution from batteries, etc.

Disclaimer: not to say that 60's-era nuclear reactor designs are good, even with more precautions being taken since Fukushima; they absolutely should be phased out in favor of new designs that provide passive safety (for several days without power).

Pitarou2• 13 years ago

On its own, I can't treat this article as credible. The compensation lawyer presents the strongest possible case for his clients, and the journalist is clearly glossing over a great deal in order to get the juiciest quotes.

From what little details are given, it sounds like the crew of the Reagan suffered from some kind of gut infection, not radiation poisoning. That would explain why they were denied port entry at Guam, and so on.

I live on the fringe of the area where contamination from Fukushima can be detected. To my knowledge, doctors haven't noticed anything unusual yet, and believe me people are watching. Still, the article sends a chill...

sitharus2• 13 years ago

The symptoms are credible, but the NY Post is not. It's like claiming the Daily Mail knows what the real effects of immigration are in the UK.

greenyoda• 13 years ago

"From what little details are given, it sounds like the crew of the Reagan suffered from some kind of gut infection, not radiation poisoning."

Do gut infections cause thyroid problems, cancers and uncontrolled gynecological bleeding?

krschultz• 13 years ago

Keep in mind in any sizeable group of people those things happen. I was a healthy 25 year old male with no issues what so ever. I'm now a 26 year old male who doesn't a have a thyroid and takes a pill every day. In between was an unexplained baseball sized growth on my thyroid that had nothing to do with anything and was thankfully not cancerous.

Shit happens and we don't always know why.

Pitarou2• 13 years ago

I'm talking about the outbreaks of diarrhea, because those are the only symptoms that are clearly epidemologically significant.

From a crew of 6,000, there's nothing that strikes me odd about the occasional case of thyroid or gynecological problems. Shit happens.

ams61102• 13 years ago

Guam turned us away

That sounds suspicious. Guam is a U.S. Territory.

cpleppert3• 13 years ago

Right, the notion it turned away an aircraft carrier a hundred miles away from fukushima is ridiculous.

cmgreen• 13 years ago

It may be the lack of capabilities to deal with a mass radiation event.

I can't find any references to how many crew are typically assigned to the USS Ronald Regan. Guam doesn't seem like it has a lot of healthcare support for a full-aircraft carrier of irradiated seamen.

Juha• 13 years ago

Related post from NBC (27th of Dec 2012): US sailors sue Japan's TEPCO for post-quake radiation exposure (http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/27/16197507-us-sa...). Interesting they used almost the same photo on the article.

dhughes• 13 years ago

You would think it would have been a good time to test or at least offer Ex-Rad to the sailors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex-Rad

"Ex-Rad (or Ex-RAD), also known by the code name ON 01210.Na, is a drug developed by Onconova Therapeutics and the U.S. Department of Defense.[1][2] This newly developed compound is said to be a potent radiation protection agent. Chemically, it is the sodium salt of 4-carboxystyryl-4-chlorobenzylsulfone.[3"

patrickg_zill• 13 years ago

The meaning behind the story is far more sinister than the sad case of some people getting cancer...

it is that TEPCO, which is the organization best suited to know and measure what was/is going on, has been shown to lie, even to its own government, about the situation.

(mentioned in more detail here: http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/28/world/asia/japan-fukushima-law... )

If it truly the case that TEPCO has been lying about things from the start, then nothing that they have said in the interim, or things that they say in the future, can be taken at face value, and whatever claims they make require independant third party confirmation.

josh-wrale• 13 years ago

If I were losing 60 or 70 pounds a month due to hyperthyroidism, I'd request that my thyroid be removed and I'd probably then be prescribed levothyroxine. I'd say it's a safe bet the thyroid isn't the root cause here. Thyroid removal is pretty common.

patrickgokey• 13 years ago

I served on the Reagan from 2003-2007 and am lucky enough to have finished my enlistment before the Fukushima incident.

I still have a large network of friends in the military and work in the defense industry in San Diego so I was surprised when I first learned of this incident only a few weeks ago. I thought the post I was reading at the time was a sick hoax at first but have since learned otherwise.

This doesn't surprise me much at all unfortunately, and I wish my fellow sailors the best of luck in not getting screwed by Uncle Sam, which is what I fully expect will happen.

dctoedt6• 13 years ago

This has come up several times in the Navy-nuke Facebook group in which I lurk (I used to be one of them). The posters in that group have been, shall we say, scathingly skeptical of these claims of radiation sickness. The group includes a number of current- and former radiological-controls specialists, known as engineering lab techs or "ELTs." Navy-nuke ELTs are a select lot who are trained to face the facts and tell it like it is. As a general rule, they're very good at spotting BS, and they're not especially inclined to just passively accept it when they do spot it. Their skepticism about this radiation-sickness story is worth taking into account.

EDIT: Consider some circumstantial evidence:

- In the Navy nuclear-power subculture, people pay attention to detail (to put it mildly). This is true in general, and especially on the subject of radiation exposure to the crew or the public.

- The commanding officer and executive officer of every U.S. aircraft carrier are nuclear-trained, on top of being senior aviators or naval flight officers; they must successfully complete the full, one-year, very-intense nuke qualification course even to be eligible to hold those jobs. Then before they assume those jobs they undergo still more training to be an XO and then CO.

- On any U.S. aircraft carrier, the chief engineer (who "owns" the evaporators that produce the ship's drinking- and washing water) and the [chief] reactor officer (who "owns" the ELTs) are nukes, of course. They're among the most-senior officers on the ship.

- Unambitious people don't put in the years of stressful work that it takes to get these jobs. It's a safe bet that these senior officers all want to be admirals someday. A radiological "incident" of the kind being described likely would severely impair their chances of ever being assigned to a responsible job again, let alone being promoted to flag rank.

So: We're being asked to believe that, in a non-combat situation, somehow all of these career-minded senior officers aboard the Reagan inadvertently allowed the crew's radiation exposure to get to dangerous levels. Sorry, I just don't buy it. I suppose we can't categorically rule out the possibility, but to me it's another reason to be skeptical of the radiation-sickness claims.

crazytony2• 13 years ago

can you tell us about the reasons for their skepticism?

dctoedt6• 13 years ago

can you tell us about the reasons for their skepticism?

The consensus seems to be that the exposure numbers being reported don't make any sense under the circumstances. (I've been out for years, so I'm not qualified to offer an opinion of my own.)

downer87• 13 years ago

I can't claim to know anything about naval nuclear engineering. My intuition tells me that avoiding runaway criticality and avoiding crew contamination are high priorities. Based on this I can think of 4 significant questions off the top of my head:

1. How might they ever know to avoid a massive radiation plume they weren't expecting? Particularly if the plume is very large and expanding faster than they can move the ship?

2. How much of the crew would be informed of such a situation? Would there be a risk of panic or mutiny, if all of the crew were permitted to fully understand such circumstances?

3. Given that this is a military vessel, if they are ordered into harm's way (or perhaps ordered to assist since they've already unwittingly suffered irreparable harm), would they say no? Would careers be protected and defended if orders were obeyed?

4. Would it be possible to fake 70 cases of thyroid polyps, leukemia, testicular cancer and uterine bleeding so bad it requires transfusions?

...and as an aside, given that we're introducing the idea that everything might be a hoax, one more question: Given what we've learned about the NSA and Facebook over the past year, how probable is it that a Navy-nuke Facebook group might be astroturfed into an echo chamber aligned with a particular agenda?

dctoedt6• 13 years ago

1. How might they ever know to avoid a massive radiation plume they weren't expecting? Particularly if the plume is very large and expanding faster than they can move the ship?

The crucial assumption here is that the crew supposedly wasn't expecting a radioactive fallout plume. From personal experience I can vouch that the crew is trained to deal with radioactive fallout. Given the Fukushima circumstances, I truly cannot imagine that the ship wasn't on alert for a radioactive plume, and would have either navigated around it or taken appropriate precautions such as setting Material Condition Zebra (closing hatches, buttoning down the ventilation system, and so on); activating the water-wash-down system; etc.

2. How much of the crew would be informed of such a situation?

The down-in-the-weeds details likely would have disseminated to the people who would deal with specific issues.

As to the big picture, I'm confident the CO would have told the entire crew the basics of what was going on -- not least so that they would be able to spot apparent anomalies and report them up the chain of command. Sailors at sea are keenly aware that they're "all in the same boat."

Would there be a risk of panic or mutiny, if all of the crew were permitted to fully understand such circumstances?

No.

(OK, I've been out for a long time, and I didn't know every single person in the Navy even then, so I can't say for certain, but ... no.)

3. Given that this is a military vessel, if they are ordered into harm's way (or perhaps ordered to assist since they've already unwittingly suffered irreparable harm), would they say no?

That's a very imaginative hypothetical question, with no indication that it bears any relationship to the facts. The U.S. Navy has a tradition of doing the needful (as our British friends sometimes say). See, e.g., the self-sacrificing heroism of the USS Johnston, USS Hoel, USS Samuel B. Roberts, and USS Heerman at the Battle off Samar on Oct. 25, 1944 [1].

Would careers be protected and defended if orders were obeyed?

Yes.

4. Would it be possible to fake 70 cases of thyroid polyps, leukemia, testicular cancer and uterine bleeding so bad it requires transfusions?

Probably not -- but that assumes facts not in evidence, namely that there actually were 70 such cases attributable to radiation. One thing I learned in years of doing litigation was not to believe everything you hear or read. For all I know, among a crew of around 5,000, the 70 cases mentioned might conceivably be within the bounds of statistical probability.

I doubt it -- U.S. Navy sailors are loyal but independent-minded, with very-sensitive and finely-calibrated bullshit detectors, coupled with a willingness to call bullshit when they encounter it.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Leyte_Gulf#The_battle

ck2• 13 years ago

Rape is covered up every week in the US military, apparently at a massive scale.

You don't think other crimes are covered up as well? Like letting people drink and bathe in radioactive water because it would get the chain of command in trouble if it was reported?

How about the fact they couldn't get a port to accept them - you think the sailors made that up and it couldn't be verified?

justin663• 13 years ago

If there's any government agency that will obfuscate, stonewall, evade responsibility and generally bullshit their way out of helping the people who get hurt on their watch, it's the DoD.

When people sperg out over specific radiation claims being floated in the NY Post (of all places) they ought to keep in mind that if these people are anywhere near as sick as they're described to be they need help, and they're up against a nasty brick wall when it comes to getting that help. Picking a side here ought to be pretty damn easy unless this turns out to be some kind of outright fraud.

Navy sailors have radiation sickness after Japan rescue

Related Stories