Quote of the Day
You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success
but only if you persist.
Isaac Asimov
[3/25/11 2:55AM] Fukushima Daiichi Reactor 3 Breach?
My current post is in process but will be published late tomorrow; I want to review the technical/scientific websites before issuing an opinion on the following.
FNC has issued 3 alerts over the past half hour about a possible breach in the Reactor 3 containment. I have found a related New York Times news story. In original post segments below, I discuss possible radiation burns on the feet suffered by two TEPCO partner employees trying to lay down power cables. I believe in the TEPCO status reports (available, e.g., via Wikipedia) there has been some discussion of a possible minor breach for the number 3 reactor vessel (I think I've seen a source saying it was considered highly unlikely). FNC, of course, got a scaremongering interviewer on the phone (cf. rant below) whom ominously started talking about melt leaks burning through the vessel and building containment, eating its way into groundwater tables, etc. My intuition suggests that scenario is highly unlikely, that whatever damage has occurred is modest, has already been contained by the foundation and any bad news is already reflected in the status quo. However, I will defer to those with more knowledge and experience and hopefully have a more objective commentary in today's daily post.
Fox News Channel Scaremongering Coverage
On Fukushima Daiichi Continues
This is an open rant to Fox News Channel management: the content and tone of the Fukushima Daiichi coverage is, by any objective standard, unbalanced, materially deficient, misleading, alarmist and irresponsible. You have engaged in deliberate lies of omission; for example, I have seen multiple interviews on Fox News with Michio Kaku unambiguously promoting the "Chernobyl solution" (i.e., burying Fukushima Daiichi under sand and concrete); at no time did you disclose that Kaku is a known critic of nuclear armament and nuclear power; at no time has Fox News pointed out even fundamental differences in reactor design and containment. I have been reading multiple scientific/technical websites daily, reviewing TEPCO status charts, etc.: almost none of the progress, not even a basic overview of what is going on, is covered. Only the most sensationalized things are discussed: black smoke here, neutron beams there, a couple of workers mediation treated for radiation exposure, acceleration of American military dependents leaving Japan, etc. Even the vocabulary reflects a biased, almost argumentative perspective: "spreading", "growing", "more critical", wider zones, more vegetables pulled off the market, etc. [One would almost never know that the situation has largely stabilized over the past week, external power is now available at the reactors, ambient radiation levels have steadily declined, reactor water levels have stabilized, no further risks of melting, etc.] Sources are often not original, e.g., yesterday's dated story on neutron beams, leave out context (number and dates of observed beams and their innocuous nature), and are not attributed to relevant original news stories.
One really has to watch Fox News' coverage to understand how the lack of context makes for distorted reporting. There is little discussion of the potassium iodide panic on the West Coast. The idea is to saturate the thyroid with stable iodide so any subsequent intake of radioactive iodine will pass through the system. Iodine has a short half-life (8 days), safety levels are generally conservative, and whatever the amount of iodine in the plume would be mitigated in its long journey to the West Coast. Yesterday, Fox News ominously reported that the iodine level had reached above the "safe levels" in Tokyo tap water. Today, there was a passing reference that Tokyo tap water was now within safe limits--but now there were other areas reporting unsafe levels. In fact, in the plants, we have often seen fluctuations in radiation levels above and below some benchmark at the plants, and workers follow existing guidelines (which may be very conservative).
There was a reference today to 3 workers (initially all described as hospitalized). In a subsequent update, Fox had dropped the number to 2, plus added a total of other injured workers (it's possible that Fox is referencing a TEPCO list of injured for both Daiichi and Daini since the beginning of the crisis). Three workers were exposed 17-18 rem (of 25 rem max) while laying a power cable in the turbine building, but only 2 were hospitalized (their contaminated feet standing in contaminated water). The Kyoto News reference (which Fox News may have used as a source in yesterday's dated neutron beam item) discusses one other worker exposed to 15 rem in a hydrogen explosion 10 days back.
I do not know how to explain Fox New's coverage which, at least on Fukushima, seems to verge on tabloid journalism. One would think, after one of the worst earthquake/tsunami incidents in history, with over 10,000 casualties and climbing with some 17,000 missing, news organizations would be responding in utter awe at how the Japanese have been able to stabilize decades-old technology that (unlike the levees in New Orleans) managed to stand up to disasters far beyond design capacity.
I will note that I am not making a comparison with other US media outlets; earlier in this series, for example, I discussed a CNN incident. The Hiroshima Syndrome website blogger writes that Japanese e-mailers at the website are appalled at generally irresponsible coverage of events in the US media. You don't see the Japanese reacting in a state of panic. Many of the guidelines that the government is imposing in terms of filtering certain milk or vegetables off the market are proactive, not "real" safety concerns. Yesterday I made reference to the HS blogger's discussion of LNT vs. radiation hormesis. As a follow-up, even a casual Google search reveals, for example, an abstract from a relevant medical text:
Current radiation protection standards are based upon the application of the linear no-threshold (LNT) assumption, which considers that even very low doses of ionizing radiation can cause cancer. The radiation hormesis hypothesis, by contrast, proposes that low-dose ionizing radiation is not only safe but is healthy and beneficial.
The author claims that his text "highlights how proponents of the LNT assumption manipulate and ignore an abundance of published data supporting radiation hormesis".
Fukushima Nuclear Incident Update
NEI's updates:
- morning: The two TEPCO partner employee hospitalization incident and improving Tokyo tap water (below safety limits) was discussed (see prior segment). Continued seawater injections into containment vessels in reactors 1 through 3 and water was added to the spent fuel pools 3 and 4.
- afternoon: TEPCO is transitioning from seawater to (preferred) freshwater for containment vessel injections. Testing of equipment shows many/most of the cooling pumps are unusable because of flood damage. Fire hose hookups are now being used at spent fuel pools in addition to regular spraying, and spent fuel pool 1 has been added. The cooling pumps at reactors 5 and 6 (in cold shutdown) are operating off electricity instead of the diesel generators.
- evening: The common use spent fuel pool, housing 60% of the fuel rods (after 18 or more months in reactor spent fuel pools), is now running on electric cooling. Overall site radiation has dropped from 193 to 21 millirem per hour over the previous 3 days. Of seawater sampling for iodine and cesium, only iodine (half-life of 8 days) remained above government safety limits.
IAEA reports some "good news" at Fukushima Daiichi although the situation remains "very serious". The black smoke from yesterday was gone by this morning. Progress was being made on restoration of instrumentation at reactors 1, 2, and 4. Testing away from Fukushima tends to be fluctuating and possibly affected by recent rains. The general gist was, with the reactor statuses improving and/or stabilizing, other concerns, namely environment, foodstuff and water contamination sampling, were moving into the foreground.
Hiroshima Syndrome starts today's update with a rant on TEPCO; information release seems to be a copy-and-paste mentality, and the lack of full, accurate, usable, responsive disclosure, probably by public relation analysts with little background in nuclear power, has contributed to media confusion. It is difficult for independent experts to assess the situation when information is filtered and interpreted in a potentially misleading way. The author also reports certain statuses from non-TEPCO sources.
Political Humor
"The name of the U.S. operation in Libya is “Odyssey Dawn.” It’s the first military action to be named by Crabtree & Evelyn." - Conan O'Brien
[I think Tanya Tucker/Helen Reddy is going to have to update her signature song "Delta Dawn".]
"The Pentagon says that U.S. operations in Libya are limited and have a definite end date. I don’t believe that. We still have troops in Germany." - Jay Leno
[The US military is implementing its new version of warfare shareware. The US taxpayer has decided the freeloader freeware version of its worldwide defense service is unsustainable. If you want the full, unrestricted protection of the US military, you must pay the full price license, plus an annual operations & maintenance fee. The official CIA brand of spyware is available as an extra-cost add-on.]
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
The Beach Boys/BJ Thomas/Ronnie Spector, "Don't Worry Baby". One of the greatest songs ever written. Reportedly the gifted songwriter's musical response to Ronnie Spector's "Be My Baby", Brian's falsetto performance is memorable. The surf era's trademark themes of the beach, pretty girls, and cool cars were pure Americana. I have to say that although I like all flavors of ice cream, I like some better than others: any regular blog reader knows I'm a huge BJ Thomas fan, and I happen to like his transforming the song into more of an abiding love song: the reality of his woman's faith in him helps him withstand creeping self-doubts.
Here's a relevant quote from Wikipedia:
The song as originally performed by the Beach Boys, is about a teenager who agrees to a challenge to race a rival in order to defend his honor after bragging about his car, and his girlfriend's plea to take her love with him when he races. The B.J. Thomas version has a more mature theme, as a man waking up to his partner every morning, thinking that her love for him is fading, but his spirits rise as she reminds him how much she believes in him and loves him.
Each morning I awake and find
The sunlight softly shining in her hair
And then I realize that I'm only
Thinkin' that she really doesn't care
There's magic in her eyes
That makes me come alive
...
She told me Baby, when you leave today
Just take along my love with you
It's also very cool to hear Ronnie's take on the song with the Ronnie Spector trademark "oh-oh-oh" gimmick at the end (remember Eddie Money's "Take Me Home Tonight"?), hearing the fairer sex's twist on the song. (Reportedly her then spouse, the legendary Phil Spector of "Wall of Sound" fame, vetoed her covering the song, which she eventually did under producer Phil Ramone.)
