Editorial: “The pall of Fukushima overshadows our energy future“

CATCHING a flight out of Fukushima in the wake of the nuclear disaster two years ago would have given you a larger dose of radiation than staying put.

This is the upshot of a new report from the World Health Organization estimating that for residents exposed to the radiation leak, the risk of developing cancer has increased only slightly.

People had been most worried about an increase in thyroid cancer, due to exposure to radioactive iodine. The report says the risk has increased by 70 per cent, but in practice this only adds 0.5 per cent to the existing risk. This would mean that a woman’s lifetime risk of getting thyroid cancer might rise from 0.75 to 1.25 if she had been exposed as an infant. The margin of increase for other cancers was much lower.


After Chernobyl, most of the population got a dose of less than 9 millisieverts of radiation over 20 years, says Gerry Thomas at Imperial College London – less than an international flight.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Cancer risk still low”