Focusing on low-exposure victims

March 2, 2015

Nuclear Regulation Authority shifts disaster focus to treating minor radiation exposure

http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20150302p2a00m0na015000c.html

The Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) has decided to shift Japan's radiation treatment strategy in the event of a nuclear disaster from focusing on directly exposed people to focusing on low-exposure victims, it has been learned.

The decision comes after it was seen that in the Fukushima nuclear disaster, many people died from the worsening of their pre-existing illnesses during evacuation, even when they had low radiation exposure.

The NRA will set up a working group of experts within the fiscal year, and update its nuclear disaster response policy after they work out details. Municipalities will then reflect the changes in their local nuclear disaster countermeasures.

Until now, nuclear disaster response has focused on high-level radiation exposure, as in the fatal exposure of two workers to radiation in the 1999 Tokaimura nuclear accident. However, in a combined disaster like the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident where an earthquake or tsunami happens alongside a nuclear disaster, most medics will likely to be deployed to treat low-level radiation exposure among evacuees with pre-existing illnesses and injuries when they flee to safe areas. In this case, the treatment of those illnesses and injuries must be prioritized, but at the time of the Fukushima disaster, facilities were not prepared to take on a large number of such patients.

After the readjustment, treatment of direct radiation exposure will be handled by specialists at places like the National Institute of Radiological Sciences in Chiba and university hospitals. Local hospitals, on the other hand, will focus on screening and removal of radioactive material from people's bodies, as well as treatment of diseases and injuries that are not radiation-related. Radiation protection suits and masks will be kept on hand, and these hospitals will temporarily quarantine people with high radiation doses in such locations as their infectious disease wards.

The NRA has been planning this readjustment using Aomori Prefecture as a model, as it already has the kind of medical system officials are aiming for. An official at the NRA secretariat's department on nuclear disaster countermeasures and protection against nuclear materials says, "When you say 'radiation exposure,' some medical institutions cannot easily accept patients. We want to create a system that can accept them, by separating the treatment roles."