No immediate danger for overexposed Fukushima Daiichi workers?!

World Nuclear News has reported that three Tokyo Electric Power Company workers have been significantly overexposed to radioactivity since the nuclear catastrophe began on March 11th. This has happened, despite the Japanese federal government weakening worker protection standards from a maximum of 5 Rem per year of exposure, five-fold, to 25 Rem per year, due to the emergency conditions. By comparison, German nuclear power plant workers are only allowed to receive a maximum of 2 Rems per year. One Japanese worker was documented to have suffered nearly 68 Rems of exposure, 59 Rems of that internal; a second worker has been exposed to over 64 Rems, 54 Rems of that internal. Internal doses are more harmful than external doses, as the hazard lingers in the body for a prolonged period, rather than being momentary or instantaneous, and then finished. But World Nuclear News concludes, misleadingly, that "Examinations by NIRS [National Institute of Radiological Sciences] also confirmed that the two workers had no health problems as a result of their exposures." This harkens back to claims of "no immediate danger," oft repeated by the nuclear establishment during the Three Mile Island meltdown, as well as during the current Fukushima nuclear catastrophe. However, as Rosalie Bertell revealed in her mid-1980s book (photo at left), "no immediate danger" does not mean that latent health damage will not surface later.