Nursing Home Explosion Kills More People than Died From Radiation at Fukushima But Not As Many As Died from Fear...

[NNadir]

...of radiation at Fukushima.

The recent explosion was not far from where I live, in a nursing home in Bucks County:

US: Pennsylvania nursing home rocked by twin explosions

Subtitle:

Deaths were reported following two explosions and fire at a nursing home outside Philadelphia, with several people still unaccounted for, officials have said.

At least two people were killed and several were missing after a pair of explosions rocked a nursing home in Bristol Township, outside the US city of Philadelphia.

The explosions on Tuesday sparked a fire and caused part of the nursing home's building to collapse, officials and police said.

The blasts at the Bristol Health and Rehab Center in Bristol Township, about 21 miles (33 kilometers) northeast of Philadelphia, are believed to have been caused by a gas leak...

...Five people were believed to be missing hours after the explosions and fire tore through the facility, Bristol Fire Marshal Kevin Dippolito told a press conference on Tuesday evening. However, some may have left the scene with family members, he added.

In addition to the two confirmed deaths, Dippolito said an unspecified number of people had sustained injuries...

...The local gas company PECO said its personnel were at the facility responding to complaints of a gas leak when the first explosion occurred.

"PECO crews shut off natural gas and electric service to the facility to ensure the safety of first responders and local residents. It is not known at this time if PECO’s equipment, or natural gas, was involved in this incident," the company said in a statement...

The evacuation of people from nursing homes, can cause deaths as nursing home residents are by definition frail, and these types of deaths notably occurred during the evacuation of Fukushima out of fear of radioactivity, a topic I often discuss. It is deaths in a nursing home here and in Fukushima that established the connection:

I have produced this link and excerpt previously here:

Comparison of mortality patterns after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant radiation disaster and during the COVID-19 pandemic ( Motohiro Tsuboi et al 2022 J. Radiol. Prot. 42 031502)

It's open sourced, but an excerpt is relevant:

However, in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant(FDNPP) accident, no direct health hazards due to radiation, such as acute radiation injury, were observed, while various indirect health effects were reported even in the acute phase [2, 3]. Major health effects are attributed to the initial emergency evacuation and displacement, deterioration of the shelter environment, evacuation from nursing homes, and psychological and social health effects. In addition, there were also the effects of medical collapse, where lives that could normally be saved by medical care could not be saved due to a lack of medical resources [4, 5]. It is known that these effects are particularly susceptible to the socially vulnerable [6].

.

I added the bold.

Now the rest of the cited text - some of these authors live and work in Fukushima and have always done so; their institution is Fukushima Medical University, Fukushima City, Japan - indicates that the fear of radiation killed people, but radiation itself didn't. By the way, this group has published hundreds of papers on the topic.

It's strange that we so fear radiation, which world wide exhibits a low death toll, and has, in fact, saved lives, and don't fear dangerous natural gas, which has killed vastly more people than radiation, and does so regularly.

Of course, most of the deaths associated with dangerous natural gas are not related to explosions, but from the climate effects of the combustion product of natural gas, carbon dioxide, and methane itself, which is the second largest driver of the extreme global heating we now experience.

I often muse to myself - there is I think no way to calculate this - about how much carbon dioxide and methane has been released to power the computer time for people to carry on about Fukushima on the internet and elsewhere. I suspect were it known, it would be non-trivial, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that more deaths have resulted from discussing Fukushima than were killed by radiation exposure in the event, which is apparently close to, if not, zero.

To return to the present nursing home case:

The nursing home that blew up in Pennsylvania had a long history of health violations. This may have implications for the survival of injured victims and evacuees.

Enjoy the holiday season. I wish you a happy and healthy New Year.

[biophile]

1. Good points- I also worked with nuclear materials and don't fear radiation

But that’s my familiarity and my income derived from it so I had a vested interest in not being fearful ☺️. To your point about the computer time and energy spent discussing the relative dangers of Fukushima- it applies to all topics and I wonder how much effort I spend in a year reading DU, writing, recc’ing, doom scrolling on any number of sites.
Maybe I need to make it a resolution to reduce my screen time from a purely “green” perspective- let alone mental health! Not to give up DU at all because that is actually good for my state of mind and I do learn so much from people like you!

[Ferrets are Cool]

2. Imagine America ramping up the building of nuclear plants WITHOUT guardrails (regulations).

That is what we face under this regime.

[NNadir]

3. While this may not be popular here to state, I think there are too many "guardrails" for nuclear power plants.

Last edited Sat Dec 27, 2025, 08:45 PM - Edit history (1)

There are not enough "guardrails" for fossil fuel plants.

Fossil fuel plants kill people whenever they operate normally; nuclear plants generally don't kill people and when they do, it is only under extreme conditions of failure.

It is fear of radiation that kills people, specifically because people think in a rote fashion that nuclear power is "dangerous," and fossil fuel plants aren't.

The real data states otherwise.

Hence people are overly concerned - out of irrational fear - about nuclear plants and just don't give a rat's ass about fossil fuel plants.

Nuclear plants save lives:

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

If follows that delaying nuclear plants under the conditions that they must prove that no one will ever be injured at any time ever by nuclear operations, a criteria not attached to fossil fuel plants, kills people. It also follows that shutting nuclear plants kills people.

In a comment in another thread, celebrating the "work" of the functional whining of the unqualified idiot Ed Lyman of the inaptly named "Union of Concerned Scientists," I wrote this:

It will be a good day when the fossil fuel industry is required to show that its waste products will never kill anyone anywhere in any century here and beyond.

One would need to understand something about what nuclear engineering is...

[thought crime]

4. Besides the 51 Fukushima evacuation deaths there were other problems.

There were and still are many problems with management of contaminated water, and agriculture in the region was severely affected by soil contamination. The government estimated costs of the cleanup were about $200 billion. The safety risk driving extensive and necessary regulation and the resulting high capital costs at each phase of development, operation, and decommissioning have much more to do with the slow development of nuclear energy than the writings of "anti-nukes".

Meanwhile, Trump has blocked development of Offshore Wind farms off the East Coast. But energy sucking Data Centers are popping up everywhere.

[NNadir]

5. One of the detestable bullshit things that antinukes feature consistently with their murderous obsessions...

Last edited Mon Dec 29, 2025, 12:29 PM - Edit history (1)

...is that the release of any amount of radiation is a tragedy, and every release of stuff that actually kills people, fossil fuel waste, is acceptable.

The world is radioactive; it has always been radioactive and always will be radioactive. In fact, the essential element potassium is radioactive, and one would die without it.

It is simply not true that the release of radioactivity is a massive tragedy, and it is a crime against humanity that this worthless bill of paranoid bullshit has been successfully sold to an illiterate public, killing people.

I covered this - unfortunately reading it would involve understanding called "science," something with which, in my experience, antinukes are almost completely ignorant - in a rather long post in which I pointed to the absurdity of this ignorance, wherein, uneducated antinukes, to repeat the "strawman" that another uneducated antinuke claimed I was making, worry that a radioactive atom from Fukushima will end up in their pernicious brains even though their brains are "smoking" (relatively) with potassium.

828 Underground Nuclear Tests, Plutonium Migration in Nevada, Dunning, Kruger, Strawmen, and Tunnels

It is just stupid, incredibly stupid, to spend $200 billion dollars to "clean up" any nuclear disaster site to a standard that antinukes do not apply to anything else, including the radioactive thorium tailings dumped in Baotou to make magnets for their soul and wilderness destroying rickety wind turbines, almost all of which will be huge liabilities before today's newborns enter college, not there are any antinukes anywhere who give a rat's ass about future generations.

Rather than squander this money, the world should build more nuclear plants. People certainly should not squander the roughly 5 trillion dollars squandered on solar and wind junk in the last 10 years, since this has had no result in addressing the collapse of the planetary atmosphere.

There is no evidence, none, of a "severe" consequence of Fukushima on human life, or for that matter, any form of life, certainly not any evidence of it killing as many people as will die in the next few hours from the unrestricted use of dangerous fossil fuels.

Of course, I have never met, and will never meet, an antinuke who gives a flying fuck about the roughly seven million people who will die this year from air pollution, which breaks down to about 19,000 people per day, 800 people per hour, which further translates, 13 people per minute, meaning in 10 minutes it took to write this post, 130 people died from antinuke ignorance.

The scientific publication which I often link referring to these thoughtless and brainless crimes against humanity, and the standard text I keep of the same whenever an antinuke comes here cheering for air pollution is here:

: Global burden of 87 risk factors in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019 (Lancet Volume 396, Issue 10258, 17–23 October 2020, Pages 1223-1249). This study is a huge undertaking and the list of authors from around the world is rather long. These studies are always open sourced; and I invite people who want to carry on about Fukushima to open it and search the word "radiation." It appears once. Radon, a side product brought to the surface by fracking while we all wait for the grand so called "renewable energy" nirvana that did not come, is not here and won't come, appears however: Household radon, from the decay of natural uranium, which has been cycling through the environment ever since oxygen appeared in the Earth's atmosphere.

Here is what it says about air pollution deaths in the 2019 Global Burden of Disease Survey, if one is too busy to open it oneself because one is too busy carrying on about Fukushima:

The top five risks for attributable deaths for females were high SBP (5·25 million [95% UI 4·49–6·00] deaths, or 20·3% [17·5–22·9] of all female deaths in 2019), dietary risks (3·48 million [2·78–4·37] deaths, or 13·5% [10·8–16·7] of all female deaths in 2019), high FPG (3·09 million [2·40–3·98] deaths, or 11·9% [9·4–15·3] of all female deaths in 2019), air pollution (2·92 million [2·53–3·33] deaths or 11·3% [10·0–12·6] of all female deaths in 2019), and high BMI (2·54 million [1·68–3·56] deaths or 9·8% [6·5–13·7] of all female deaths in 2019). For males, the top five risks differed slightly. In 2019, the leading Level 2 risk factor for attributable deaths globally in males was tobacco (smoked, second-hand, and chewing), which accounted for 6·56 million (95% UI 6·02–7·10) deaths (21·4% [20·5–22·3] of all male deaths in 2019), followed by high SBP, which accounted for 5·60 million (4·90–6·29) deaths (18·2% [16·2–20·1] of all male deaths in 2019). The third largest Level 2 risk factor for attributable deaths among males in 2019 was dietary risks (4·47 million [3·65–5·45] deaths, or 14·6% [12·0–17·6] of all male deaths in 2019) followed by air pollution (ambient particulate matter and ambient ozone pollution, accounting for 3·75 million [3·31–4·24] deaths (12·2% [11·0–13·4] of all male deaths in 2019), and then high FPG (3·14 million [2·70–4·34] deaths, or 11·1% [8·9–14·1] of all male deaths in 2019).

Nuclear energy saves lives.

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

I always invite antinukes to show, that in the 70 year history in which nuclear energy has been saving human lives, that nuclear operations have killed, including of course their penny ante obsessions with Chernobyl and Fukushima, as many people as will die today from air pollution, roughly, again, 19000 people. Only legitimate referenced scientific publications from the primary or secondary scientific literature can be accepted to address this claim, links to websites in the circle jerk of toxic antinuke ignorance promotion are not acceptable for this purpose.

Over the years, not one of these participants in the antinuke crimes against humanity has responded intelligently to this challenge.

Not once.

Nuclear energy doesn't need to be risk free to be vastly superior to all other forms of energy. It only needs to be vastly superior to everything else, which it is.

I wish you the happiest New Year.

[thought crime]

6. Yes, nuclear energy saves lives

Nuclear energy has been one energy source that does not appreciably contribute to air pollution and global warming. Zealous advocates of nuclear energy generally get all the basic science right but seem to be locked in some kind of denial about the economics, which clearly does not favor nuclear energy in it's current form, and seem to view the social or psychological views toward radiation with very little understanding or sympathy.

The use of hyperbole doesn't win many points, either. Blaming all deaths from air pollution on anti-nuke ignorance is a bit much. Worrying about the amount of carbon dioxide and methane specifically released to power computers for "AntiNuke" discussion is an example of extreme paranoia that more than matches the ultra fear of radiation. Worry more about bitcoin miners.

Dismissing efforts to develop renewable energy as junk or garbage also reveals a strong bias. These sources are providing energy around the world and are currently among the least costly to develop. Shall we blame all air pollution or global warming related deaths on Anti-Wind or Anti-Solar activists? No, but we can certainly condemn Trump's ban on Offshore Wind as a horrible act of pettiness and corruption. Could someone explain to him that wind turbines' impact on wilderness or wildlife pales in comparison to ocean-wrecking global warming? Turbines may kill some birds or even some whales, but they are meant to save coral reefs and ocean ecosystems. If "rickety" wind turbines will become "huge" liabilities we must ask ourselves if that might be easier to manage over the long term than the much larger liability of radioactive waste handling and storage, for which no safe and economically viable solution has ever been achieved. We're passing that liability on to many following generations.

I don't consider myself to be an "AntiNuke" but I don't believe nuclear energy is a panacea for energy concerns. Overall, the problems with nuclear energy in this country make it somewhat of a dead horse, while the growing momentum of Wind & Solar shows great potential. Most important, the problems and challenges of scaling up Wind & Solar are being overcome at an impressive rate through much remarkable innovation.

I'd be interested to hear your perspective on Fusion energy. Is it viable? Would it be safer than fission reactors? Would it overcome the waste issue? Would the cost be prohibitive? It seems to be a good area for nuclear advocates to focus.