So, Are We Talking “ZOMG MELTDOWN!” or What?
Like many of you, I’ve been watching the breathless news coverage of the potentially-catastrophic situation at Japan’s Fukijima Daiich nuclear plant. Like many of you, I watched the video of the explosion there and thought “Wow…that can’t be good”.
But how “not good” is the situation there? Well, there we wade into incredibly murky waters. Most of the news services reporting on the story are shoving out facts as quickly as they can, free of useful context. Their stories are often contradicted by facts that come out minutes or hours later. Meanwhile, virtually every news service has rounded up an “expert” or two – some of whom, like the man quoted in this ABC News story, doesn’t appear to have any real experience in nuclear physics beyond advocacy and policy work. What has resulted are stories like this one from Reuters, that draws unfair comparisons to Three Mile Island and Chernobyl before we have enough facts to decide whether such comparisons are apt. The networks are hustling to catch up to events, but their idea of news coverage involves sending celebrity anchors like Anderson Cooper and Christiana Amanpour (via mediagazer). No doubt you’ll see a lot of concerned faces and hear an earful of serious rhetoric, but you probably won’t get much solid reporting.
The answer to the question I asked in the last paragraph is, “We really don’t know, and we’re not likely to know until the media stops running around like a chicken with its head cut off and starts doing some calm, professional work”. Let me give you an example. Here is a post from Al Jazeera’s live blog of the disaster:
6:37am
Yesterday, we reported that three people had tested positive for elevated radiation levels. That number has now jumped to 160, says a Japanese nuclear safety official.
Okay, so what? How elevated were those levels? Where do the elevated levels compare to a deadly level of radiation? There is no context here and, as a result, we don’t know whether this is worrisome news or an outright disaster.
I suggest news outlets get the guy who wrote this blog post on just how much radiation is dangerous to humans on the phone (via Jonah Goldberg). Then, they could compare the estimated dosage of radiation in the containment building to what we receive in a routine year. They could explain to us that there are different types of meltdowns, then tell us where this one (if it is, indeed a meltdown) fits. They could explain the difference between a precautionary evacuation and one caused by necessity. They could stop relying on think-tank “scholars” sitting in an office somewhere, and get some actual nuclear technicians to tell us how reactors work and what the likely dangers are.
Admittedly, getting the story right is more difficult than throwing scraps of information and a few sound bytes by “scholars” at us, but what do I know? I’m just some guy who thinks that journalism ain’t rocket-science.
Other Posts of Interest:
- The Inspectors General Scandal and Real Journalism, Blogger-Style
- Democrats Came to Give a Lecture, But Went to School Instead
- If Conservatives Want A New Media Environment, They’re Going to Have to Listen
Category: Oh, THAT liberal media., The World At Large, Thinking About Energy
[...] DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE JAPANESE NUCLEAR SITUATION? Not that much. Which is why I’m not doing much with it — the reports are conflicting, and often third- [...]
It would be good to clarify how they tested positive for elevated radiation. Was it just an elevated reading from a geiger counter due to contamination on their clothes and skin, or are people showing signs of radiation sickness? if the people themselves show radiation, they either had to ingest or breath in radioactive particles or have been exposed to a really big dose.
I think the only clarity will come from the japanese government saying and showing all they know. Once they have people evacuated from the area, if they have a video camera in the containment building they should show it as a live feed like was done for the macando disaster. I don't think we'll see reporters sleuthing around and getting better information, it's too dangerous.
CNN seems to be doing much better than Fox in this regard. Their experts seem to know what they’re talking about, and are making a good effort to explain that we don’t yet know how good or bad things really are.
The NY Times is reporting that government officials said that 3 workers were suffering from "full out radiation illness."
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/14/world/asia/14nu…
I don't have the scientific background to assess the situation and obviously in disasters there are a lot of conflicting reports in any disaster situation. But it does not look good right now.
I suggest news outlets get the guy who wrote this blog post on just how much radiation is dangerous to humans on the phone …
You must understand that one of the reasons that media reports now are confusing and in some cases contradictory is that the government of Japan is not being entirely transparent.
For reasons of policy, governments tend to understate real risks so as to avoid a general panic. They’ll sacrifice some people to save those who might be injured by the general panic.
The media are entirely reliant on government sources for their information and history has proven that these sources are sometimes deliberately understating actual risks or are outright lying about those risks to cover their own incompetence.
We do know – from 50 years of history – precisely how governments respond in these situations: they lie, they dissemble, they understate. This isn’t a criticism … just a restatement of easily researched nuclear disaster history.
I am a fan of FoxNews' political coverage most times, but when it comes to science and geography they are horrible.
For one thing they had cameras on the California beaches while any "action" visible would be in harbor. They failed to look at tide charts.
Harris Falkner had San Mateo NORTH of San Francisco. One other dope had it at the bottom of San Francisco Bay.
It is like Fox Sports coverage of Nascar Racing: Danica – Jr – Danica – Jr – Danica – Jr
Why LameStream media is well…..lame
Off to the blogsphere:
http://www.blackfive.net/main/2011/03/japanese-re…
Well, with a very few exceptions, 'commentators' on tv know very little other than 'policy' and/or how to make things sound scary.
Personally, I'd love it if this turns out no worse than Three Mile Island. The stats seem to show that if everyone in a ten-mile radius got the maximum dose of radiation released anywhere the result was one-half extra death in ten years.
I suspect much of the information we get from the networks will either be wrong or tainted by politics. CNN actually had 'Bill Nye the Science Guy' on! He may be a nice guy but he quickly revealed that he was way out of his depth. He started talking about how they had detected Cesium and that it was a material they pump into a reactor to control the reaction. This is completely wrong! Cesium is a byproduct fission and is not ever used in control rods.
Van
I'm a lowly intellectual worm compared to some of the individuals working on this 'problem'.
I do have a simple question – based on an assumption I will reveal in the question.
If the containment dome/building is built to withstand/and indeed seems to have withstood the earthquake+tsunami without a breach, AND the tsunami is responsible for the destruction of the critical emergency backup systems. Why were these critical backup systems not ALSO housed inside an identical type of structure, and instead left exposed in less secure locations. The presumption being that with backup power available, some amount of critical coolant flow could have been maintained for a limited period to prevent a total meltdown scenario?
This humble serf begs the ministers indulgence and forgiveness for his rude intrusion with such simple thoughts.
Because it's worth spending that much money to keep a reactor containment breach from killing a lot of people, but not worth it to prevent an "engineering casualty" that will require an expensive repair or at worst case a write off and expensive cleanup.
I predict that more people will be killed in automobile accidents and die from smoking cigarettes in the few minutes it took me to read this article, and comment, than EVERYBODY affected by radiation from this tsunami.
It fact more innocent Israelis were murdered in their home this weekend by Palestinian terrorists.
Jimmie, you are so dead on about this. What to believe? I found this blog post's answers informative (and fascinating) on the subject: http://bit.ly/gYCnPO
Darcy, thank you for posting that link. I was going to do so in an update, but you saved me from it!
Thanks to the rest of you for what's shaping up to be a pretty good conversation. If this is your first visit here, feel free to poke around at some of my other posts and comment freely!
“CNN actually had ‘Bill Nye the Science Guy’ on …”
Yeah, that was just too funny. The children currently running CNN need to be put to bed.
Look folks, you’re simply not going to get news from CNN. They let go all their journalists and only have Democrat Party propagandists left.
In today’s US media environment, the best sources for unbiased professional disaster reporting are probably going to be the BBC and other UK media outlets.
Simple Simon> Well, I don't have blueprints for the Fukijima plant in front of me, so I don't know where the backup diesel generators for the plant are located. But I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that the generators or at least the diesel fuel tanks were probably located at or near ground level. (You have to run the generators occassionally and refill the tanks with diesel fuel, so sticking the fuel tanks a few stories up would be problematic.) Also, even if the generators are housed in a concrete building of some sort, they have to have ventilation to draw in oxygen and vent carbon dioxide. So the building the generators in can't possible be air tight, unlike the containment building.
Now here comes a 12 foot wave of water pouring across the site. The containment buildings aren't going to budge, being damned close to mountains. But if water gets into the generators… Or even just contaminates the diesel fuel… Waterlogged generators and contaimated fuel oil do not work particularly well. Even if the generators haven't been physically smashed.
Mind you, I'm just taking an educated guess here. It could very well be that the generators weren't as well protected to save a few bucks, and were left out in the open. I guess we'll find out long after everything is said and done.
I have been searching for news with little success. This is what I read on the IAEA news site. The overheating of the reactor was bedause the High Pressure Core Injection system (HPCI) did not initiate because the Emergency Core Cooling Sysytem (ECCS) deisel generators did not start because they were flooded. Initiation of HPCI implies that there was a loss of coolant accident, but I have not read anywhere that that is what happened. On another site I read that the water level had dropped 90 cm below the top of the fuel. This could cause some fuel rods to rupture, releasing CS and Iodine. A ruptured fuel rod is a long way from the core melt of Three Mile Island. But again, not enough information to assess. But again, that doesn't make good headlines.
The plant is a GE Boiling Water Reactor (BWR). That means its normal operating pressure is 1000 psi or 69 bar. The containment is inside a regular building. BWRs operate at half the pressure of a PWR. Usually what happens on a LOCA is that there is a pipe break that starts depressurizing the plant. Because the coolant is at about 525 degrees F and 1000 psi, the coolant flashes to steam and there is choked flow at the break, slowing the fluid down a little. The fluid blows down into the containment building. There is an external tank that starts feeding water into the vessel above the core using HPCI and HPCS (high pressure core spray). Since it is expected to loss off site power, emergency diesels start to provide power to the pumps. When the tanks are empty, a suction is taken on the containment and the water is recycled.
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Because of the failure of the diesels, back up electrical power has been brought on site. They are talking about cooling with borated seawater (the boron absorbs neutrons). Note, the fuel is only 5% enriched U235 and can not cause a nuclear explosion. The heat from the plant is decay heat;i.e., the by products of burning the fuel.
For full disclosure, I work in the nuclear industry analyzing BWRs. But I am in the dark also.
Sorry I had to cut this up because it was too long.
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The only place I've found information on the nuc plants that is worth a damn thing is on Japan's NHK. NHK is a true news channel, a disseminator of information, not the "news as combination entertainment and contact sport" channels we have over here. However, if you don't understand Japanese, it's not much help to you. What boggles my mind is that NHK has been announcing much of the information CNN and such keep claiming "we don't know." CNN can't afford to hire a J-E translator to scribble down some of the official announcements and pass them along to the newsroom? A spokesman from TEPCO had a presser on NHK and announced the decision to cool the first reactor with borated seawater several *hours* before CNN and Fox even began to mention it. Add to that the grossly misleading screen crawls I've been seeing, and it's no wonder people are expecting Chernobyl x6. My favorite: "Explosion at nuclear plant in meltdown." Of course it was a *hydrogen* explosion, outside of the containment, and meltdown only means the fuel rods are partly exposed and bits of them are beginning to break down resulting in the Cs and I release. But Joe Sixpack is going to read that as "A-bomb plus China Syndrome." And the "experts" they had on have ranged from clueless to biased to lame. I can honestly say that If they called me I could have done better than all but one of the people I've seen, especially with my information from the NHK.
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