From my town newspaper, in the story covering a young English teacher who was just now able to return home after being in Japan during the earthquake. She gets it, why can’t the media?
While saying the threat associated with the damaged nuclear power plants, about 140 miles from Koga, have been overstated by the media, she quipped, “I’m not glowing. I was supposed to be glowing.”
Full story here:
http://www.chicoer.com/fromthenewspaper/ci_17651319
The Register also mentioned something similar about the media yesterday in their online briefing:
Good news from Japan: Situation ‘fairly stable’, says IAEA
And, an online “wall of shame” has been established for logging media blunders in this affair:
http://jpquake.wikispaces.com/Journalist+Wall+of+Shame
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Yeah, gee, I don’t know why they even bother to build such elaborate containment shelters. The radiation is harmless – so what’s the problem? If it leeches into the environment, no one gets killed, no one is harmed. The media should just shut up already. Why would anyone be afraid of radiation? It’s natural and has some great health benefits, and it’s not like it’s gonna kill anyone or cause cancer or anything. I can’t believe all this hype? And that Japanese nuclear guy crying on TV! What a wussy. Nothing is wrong with exposed fuel, whether spent or not, so just quit your crying, you big fat baby. People should just turn off their TV’s and stop watching. Nuclear power is 100% safe and affective, there’s absolutely nothing to worry about. So get out there! Sniff the clean fresh air! A few extra rads never hurt anybody. Even if its 10 or 100 times normal for a few years, no one ever died from that. What’s the worry? All a bunch of sissies. Just let the whole damn thing melt down and build a dozen more in their place.
Memo to Fox News: Never send the likes of Geraldo or Shepard Smith to the scene of a major disaster if all you want is news reportage. Is the level of ratings so important that you allow these guys to make stuff up to portray radiological doom in the making? Regretably, I suspect I know the answer. It is legitimate to report the horribly sad results of quake and wave, but on matters radiological, they should leave it to those who KNOW what they’re talking about.
Well, there is good mixed in with the bad….please see this Chicago Tribune article about the dismal state of on-site spent fuel rod storage in our Illinois reactors:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-0320-spent-fuel-20110319,0,5809639.story
I don’t worry at all about the reactor core containment, as the reactor containment domes were built to stand a direct hit from a loaded jetliner. However, these storage pools were supposed to be very temporary, and the US government was obligated to find a permanent storage solution.
Hasn’t happened yet, thank you, Sen. Reid and others. This stuff sits right on the shore of Lake Michigan or over our groundwater, so a relatively simple storage pool accident could have serious consequences for the USA.
Surprising non-hysteria from NPR
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/03/19/134658088/radiation-data-near-nuclear-plant-offers-little-cause-for-concern
Some other radiation source is likely to be the cause of that hot spot 18 miles from the plant. Maybe an old surveyor’s cesium source or a something.
Temperatures at the plants today are also reported below 100C.
The only way GE might stand to gain is orders for things like ABWRs or ESBWRs to replace the BWR plants.
Westinghouse Nuclear might make out too for orders of AP1000 plants.
I hadn’t heard of a story saying the radiation level 140 miles away was dangerous. She was glad to be out, “her voice broke and the tears began to flow”.
Gary
That is some delicious sarcasm Gary. Thank you!
At 9:25 am, prior commenter Richard mentions the heroic power station workers. True enough. One was even killed – quake related, not radiation. But otherwise, these folks are doing their jobs and bringing the situation under control. At the end of the following link is a list of injuries/issues at the power plant. This too needs to be well known.
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Progress_by_on-site_workers_1703111.html
“Only one casualty has been reported at the Fukushima Daini plant. A worker in the crane operating console of the exhaust stack was seriously injured when the earthquake struck. He subsequently died.”
Let the power company, agency experts, and engineers do their work and learn from what happened at the power station.
The focus of most people should be on the survivors of the tsunami.
The ultimate insult was the “Xenon 132 detected in Sacramento” yesterday.
1/1,000,000 anomaly over normal background.
Then somebody else took another measurement and came up with the background and no anomaly.
Why did they do that? Announce detection of Nuclear Accident fallout in Sacramento and then calmly dimiss it. Headlines!
The headline should have said “No Nuclear Accident fallout measured in Sacramento: False Alarm”. And zoom in on the Dept. of Energy demonstrating thier instrument in action. Put the man on camera. A face. And then find a layman with a geiger counter, and do the same. Establish credibility.
You know what they say about wishes? If they all were dishes, they’d all be broken.
Please note that there are going to be a lot of radiation sources, probably many long forgotten, that will be uncovered now that everyone is looking for radiation. With so many things damaged and destroyed, other sources of radiation may be released.
So finding a hot spot 100 miles away may well have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the Fukushima plants.
“crosspatch says:
March 19, 2011 at 11:06 am
Some other radiation source is likely to be the cause of that hot spot 18 miles from the plant. Maybe an old surveyor’s cesium source or a something.”
Maybe there is a warehouse for bananas, peanut butter, or Brazil Nuts. Okay, maybe not, but it does seem like an “only exception” warrants a look at other sources.
Beesaman said March 19, 2011 at 9:18 am:
“Someone should also remind Fox and CNN that their job is to report the news, not cause hysteria and panic through media hype. But I guess that’s infotainment for you!”
Regrettably that is NOT the job of today’s media, rather it is to maximize profits for it’s corporate interests and shareholders. It’s been proven time-and-time-again that sensationalism “sells”, captures an audience, and justifies higher advertizement rates. (BTW, this is one reason to insure that NPR/PBS is not allowed to go under – they provide our closest approximation to true journalism.)
Still there are limits to how far you can sensationalize a disaster event, especially those events that we do not truly understand the full extent of evolving risks. But you can always count on opportunists to site fringe/extreme examples to leverage a POV. I’ve seen nothing reported that would even hint at the content of the teacher’s “quip” … but, of course, it’s the highlight quote here.
That’s why this thread, other than reemphasizing a cultural shortcoming, is completely worthless.
REPLY: Jack, you’ve said previously on many occasions and in many different ways that “everything on WUWT is completely worthless”, so why do you keep coming back here? If somehow you feel tethered here, I release you, fly away. There’s no room under the bridge for you. – Anthony
So far, the MSM has been all over the spectrum, but mostly veering toward the “panic” end of it. Other than an occasional article (usually opinion), there hasn’t been a lot of sense or understanding of what was happening. Fortunately, I’ve found some sites with relatively good information that they’ve sifted carefully from the government and industry press releases. Many of the commentators appear to have a nuclear engineering background. All are frequently updated with new developments either in story/article form or in the running comments on the most recent post. I hope this helps. These would be good for any journalist’s bag of resources, too.
http://bravenewclimate.com/ is one. I actually got this site from WUWT back on the first day of the incident.
http://mitnse.com/ is another I was connected to by a friend.
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/default.aspx is one I found through BNC’s site.
All three are providing news and rational commentary that is understandable by laymen and are very helpful in maintaining perspective.
Ron Pittenger, Heretic
Yes, it was sarcasm, but explain this: http://vigilantcitizen.com/latestnews/ann-coulter-on-fox-news-radiation-is-good-for-you-video/
Sorry, moderator, the direct link to the video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FNFF61E_Dg&feature=player_embedded
Google can get to some strange websites…
“but it does seem like an “only exception” warrants a look at other sources.”
Particularly so if the radiation does not increase on a line between that source and the plant. If the radiation was due to some contamination from the plant, the radiation would be expected to increase as you backtrack that path to the source. If the radiation does not increase toward the suspected source, then that probably isn’t the source.
There are all sorts of potentials sources. Is there a university research lab in that town that might have radioactive materials? Heck, was a building made from recycled steel from Hiroshima or Nagasaki? Did the town have a plant that made gun sights, watches or instruments with radium dials for viewing in low light conditions? There could be any number of sources.
“REPLY: Jack, you’ve said previously on many occasions and in many different ways that “everything on WUWT is completely worthless”, so why do you keep coming back here? If somehow you feel tethered here, I release you, fly away. There’s no room under the bridge for you. – Anthony”
Oh, I find some participants on this site do have interesting comments and perspectives, and I find some of your posts on new technologies informative and interesting. On the other hand, a primary objective behind WUWT is to advance a POV … often in a ways that can’t be logically supported … sometimes with exaggeration equal to the story lines presented.
… and believe me, I’m far from tethered to WUWT, although it may not seem that way to you. Sorry, but sometimes the silliness puts me over the top drives me to comment.
REPLY: So what other sites do you frequent daily/regularly?
GE is a company who manufactures light bulbs which eexpire before a carton of milk in the refrigerator, and fills up the landfills with their monthly failures and mercury CFL lightbulbs. NBC/MSNBC broadcasts news productions which redefine and greatly extend the meaning of yellow journalism. Comcast cannot seem to keep a cable network up and running properly, tells customers they must wait a week for a repairman to make a service call at the service location before they will accept a report of a network outtage not occurring at the service location, and insists upon dunning dissatisfied customers with debt collection actions while disregarding customer orders to terminate the service.
These are the same organizations and people who promote Climate Change alarmism and economic policies to financially benefit themselves while claiming to be intellectually and morally superior to the critics of Climate Change politics.
There was once upon a time when the City of Chicago supplied its electrical power customers with free tungsten lightbulbs which lasted five to ten years and longer before burning out. GE says they can no longer manufacture such lightbulbs because they are not environmentally friendly due to their additional consumption of electrical power. It makes a person wonder just how much energy is required to manufacture and dispose of one light bulb every one or two months versus once every five to ten years?
Wolf Blitzer really got under my skin this week. He strongly suggested that an interviewee was trying to spin him concerning topics of seismology and nuclear reactor construction, and the safety of the San Onofre reactor regarding Earthquakes. Yet it was Blitzer’s own ignorance on the topic that was causing the misunderstanding. When he suggested the San Onofre guy was trying to spin him, Blizter pissed me off more than any journalist has in a long time.
Full story Here
GE sold a controlling interest in NBC to Comcast but still owns 48% of the venture, says the wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Electric_timeline
“I’m not glowing. I was supposed to be glowing.”
She’s not glowing because 50 people risked their lives and worked against the clock to ensure that she’s not glowing. People don’t get blown to pieces either when explosive ordinance experts manage to defuse car-bombs.
“REPLY: So what other sites do you frequent daily/regularly?”
I make rounds to the “usual suspects” … Climate Audit, Open Mind, Climate Depot (IMO, the most loathsome bastion of pure & shameful propaganda), Real Climate, WUWT, Climate Progress (with whom you maintain a sissy-slap-fight), etc.
IMJ, some sites are more seriously focused on the science than others; have clearer positions with better supporting data and research. Other sites, to varying degrees, focus more on political angles, on “shaping” opinions concerning a very complex subject. They often present carefully selected pseudo-science perspectives that wouldn’t hold up to professional scrutiny ,yet are given a “stage” of exaggerated credibility. It comes down to an informed judgment call as to where on the continuum different sites fall.
What hippie anti-nuclear alarmist fail to realize is that alla those safety features that goes into the design of a nuclear power plant isn’t much more ‘an what safety features goes into a normal carpet.
A carpet has a certain fire class rating, not to prevent an accident like an accidental fire, but to prevent unnecessary loss of life if it should catch fire. The safety feature is thus a mean to give an inhabitant enough time to get out from the house, to give rescuers time to help, to give firefighters time to help contain the fire and prevent it from spreading, et cetera.
It’s pretty much the same for nuclear power plants, the safety features are just there to prevent unnecessary loss of life and not earth quakes and tsunamis from happening.
crosspatch says:
March 19, 2011 at 11:25 am
>>So finding a hot spot 100 miles away may well have absolutely nothing whatsoever to >>do with the Fukushima plants.
Japan is mountainous. Anyone who has been in mountainous regions knows that you can have an idyllic meadow were the wind never blows more then 5 MPH and a few hundred meters away have a wind tunnel where the wind always blows more then 20 MPH. There are going to be hotspots.
The USAF is already doing high resolution radiation mapping and I would assume passing that on to the Government of Japan, who I would assume is then sending folks out to make a ground confirmation and quarantine the foodstuffs.
Of course our media is presenting this as though ‘random sampling’ is picking this all up, which would be a greater cause for concern.
The other thing to remember is that radiation level standards for drinking water and foodstuffs assume you will be ingesting them on a daily basis for a lifetime. So they are extremely low.
One is tempted to cut the media a bit of slack. Unlike the 23 year old
English teacher above, many reporters (or their editors) were around
for the Three Mile Island “event” here in the U.S.
It took Duke Power and the AEC months to finally
announce that, yes indeed, there had been a partial meltdown at
that facility.
Early on, both our government and Duke were adamant in saying there
really wasn’t much wrong at this plant, nothing to worry about, move
along, for weeks.
Through interviews and press releases, the regulators and the regulated
proffered a series of half truths and rosy scenarios that led the media
and the populace away from any thoughts that the facililty was near the
tipping point for the China syndrome.
The Atomic Energy Commission has since been renamed as the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission.
The Japanese nuclear industry follows the operating model many Japanese
companies embrace in their relationship with their Japanese government
regulators. They tend to skip together merrily down the lane hand-in-hand.
“Regulation” in Japanese industry carries the unspoken but very operative
word “cooperation” as an integral part of its definition.
So, here we are. The news media has to rely on Tokyo Power and the
Japanese regulators for their information. The Intenational Atomic Enegry
folks have to rely on these same information sources. The WHO has to
take what the IAE gives them.
They are all issuing press releases and giving limited interviews.
You won’t see science reporters given hazmat suits and an escort
to see inside the plant for on-the-scene reporting. You won’t see
IAE or WHO folks in there to take their own measurements either.
You can rebuild and actually live on earthquake/tsunami sites. You can’t
on or around the site of a nuclear “event”.