Sunday, March 20, 2011
The news gets better from Fukushima
Here's a nice summary of the current status of the Fukushima nuke> Nut 'graphs:
Last Saturday the the crisis level at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station was rapidly on the rise. Hydrogen explosions, cracks in the wetwell torus and fires in a shutdown unit’s building — it seemed the sequence of new problems would never end. A week later, the situation remains troubling, but, over the last few days, it has not got any worse. Indeed, one could make a reasonable argument that it’s actually got better.
Yes, the IAEA has now formally listed the overall accident at an INES level 5 (see here for a description of the scales), up from the original estimate of 4. This is right and proper — but it doesn’t mean the situation has escalated further, as some have inferred. Here is a summary of the main site activities for today, followed by the latest JAIF and FEPC reports.
Read the whole thing. Unless all your attention is focused on Libya...
3 Comments:
By 
, at
Sun Mar 20, 12:33:00 PM:
Great article on the nuclear disaster on MIT blog. Web address is www.mitnse.com. Explains facts actually happening by MIT's nuclear science and engineering department.
By Bigol, at
Sun Mar 20, 03:31:00 PM:
I thought about how much the world is in a panic over the low doses to date (thank goodness they're low, knock on wood) and decided that a blog should be created on the hype and hysteria generated by much of the news today...
First post: http://herbegerenews.wordpress.com/2011/03/20/sunday-20-march-2011/
World News: In shocking news today the general public discover...
By , at
Sun Mar 20, 04:26:00 PM:
umm, well, maybe a better way to put it is "the news *they're announcing* APPEARS TO BE getting better at fukushima." which is, BTW, a factual (barely) description of the following: 'it's probably getting much worse, but we can't prove it.'
far and away the best source on anything that might be approaching the actual *truth* of the matter can be found at serohedge. leaving aside all the technical details of cesium half-life and "why would they think that highly sensitive electric motors and pumps **that were submerged for a long time in salt water** are going to work just because they hook up an extension cord to them?", tyler and ZH posted a factoid yesterday that tells you all you need to know.
"since heat in & around the fukushima reactor complex seems to be the biggest issue, why have no thermal or IR photos been released to the public, and more importantly why is the japanese government actively covering up thermal data?" now mind you, they HAVE the data.....they're just refusing to show it. rather like - now i think of it - rather like all the tapes the FBI has of the "757" "flying 10 feet above ground level at 400 knots piloted by a guy who was universally judged to be the worst pilot in history", but the only one they'll release is the 2-second "flash of white exploding" from the parking lot camera.
national security is a bitch, ain't it?
does that sound like things are getting better? or does it sound like the quintessentially japanese response to bad and/or embarrassing news: ignore it, deny it, pretend it never happened, and maybe it'll go away. much better that a few hundred? thousand? million? people suffer or die than to be shamed into admitting a screwup and suffer a loss of face, right?
