Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Meltdowns and Misinformation

Thank you, F6, for ALL of that. There isn't much to add.

What do we actually know about Japan's nuclear crisis?
BY JOSEPH CIRINCIONE | MARCH 18, 2011



On March 16, Gregory Jaczko, .. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=134600420 .. head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), went out of his way to rebut Japanese claims that a fuel pool at the Fukushima site still had water in it. "There is no water in the spent fuel pool, and we believe that radiation levels are extremely high," he said, citing U.S. intelligence over Japanese statements. The conflicting information has hurt authorities' credibility in Japan and also contributed to an atmosphere in which the public is simply unsure what to believe. As one resident fleeing the reactors said, .. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Japan/MC19Dh01.html .. "We have small children, and we don't want to take any chances about them getting radiation sickness. We cannot trust this government. Can you?" And Americans have hardly been immune to this skepticism.

Traveling to California this week, I met a number of reasonable people who were in a veritable panic about radioactive clouds washing across the United States. Some Americans have reacted to this tragedy by hoarding potassium iodide pills .. http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/japan-crisis-spikes-demand-for-pills-that-offer-limited-radiation-protection/2011/03/15/ABHC2rZ_story.html .. (which can help block the body's absorption of radioactive iodine). The Union of Concerned Scientists issued a plea .. http://allthingsnuclear.org/post/3923661762/radiation-risk-to-the-us .. for restraint, saying "The people of Japan should be given priority access to potassium iodide pills."

Newspaper headlines like the Los Angeles Times' "Small amounts of radiation headed for California, but no health risk seen," .. http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-japan-nuclear-usa-20110317,0,1431467.story .. didn't help. Despite caveats in the stories, readers -- and I mean very smart, highly educated readers -- think that they are in danger from radioactive clouds. They simply do not believe the claims that there is no risk.

Just this morning, March 18, after I explained in detail over breakfast to a friend why any radiation from Japan would be greatly diluted by the time it traveled 5,000 miles across the Pacific, my friend -- a successful businesswomen and breast cancer survivor -- told me, "I don't have a margin of error here. I do not want to be part of anyone's science experiment. I don't want to be a nuclear lab rat." She has turned strongly anti-nuclear power overnight.

The electronic and print coverage of the crisis has actually been impressively balanced and sober. I have seen firsthand the extraordinary editorial efforts of a major network to make sure that its reporters were getting it right, neither buying the spin nor hyping the threat.

This fear, then, springs from a deeper source than the media. From the beginning, nuclear weapons and reactors have both fascinated and terrified us. Their power filled us with awe; their risks scared us to death. In the 1950s there were brisk sales of backyard fallout shelters and films featuring giant mutant ants rising from the Nevada atomic test site. Radiation is perhaps the most frightening aspect of the bombs and reactors. For the workers battling in the dark hulks of the Fukushima reactors, radiation is the horror film monster: invisible, untouchable, and deadly. The American public may be thousands of miles away, but the fear is the same.

The only antidote to this panic is accurate, complete information. We have gotten neither from TEPCO. The Japanese government must distance itself from the now discredited power company and speak directly and regularly to the Japanese public. Officials should release all the latest information on the crisis, including radiation and water levels, worker casualties, and progress on containing the fires or -- and this is key -- the lack of progress. They must be as frank about the failures as they have tried to be reassuring about the successes. If not, more citizens will come to the same conclusion as Tokyo resident Masako Kitajima, who told Reuters, .. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110316/wl_nm/us_japan_quake_trust .. "This government is useless."

U.S. officials must speak just as clearly in the days ahead to calm American fears. President Barack Obama .. http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/03/17/president-obama-we-will-stand-people-japan .. made a good start on March 17. He assured the public -- twice -- that "We do not expect harmful levels of radiation to reach the West Coast, Hawaii, Alaska, or U.S. territories in the Pacific." He also promised that the NRC will do "a comprehensive review of the safety of our domestic nuclear plants in light of the natural disaster that unfolded in Japan." The first statement will have to be repeated many times more by officials over the next few days, the latter followed by real action over the next few months.

If the U.S. nuclear industry has any chance of surviving the Fukushima disaster, there must be frank talk about safety and risks. Bland statements about how safe U.S. reactors are will simply trigger the same mistrust in Americans that false assurances did among the Japanese. There will need to be a thorough, independent reassessment of the safety of all U.S. reactors, existing and planned, if the American public is to be convinced to keep them in their backyards.

For our part, policy and security experts must make sure that we don't overplay the dangers or understate the risks. I have made my own mistakes in the past few days of media commentary. I have said that the radiation could contaminate hundreds or thousands of square kilometers (which is true) and render them uninhabitable basically forever (which is not true). Some contaminated areas could be reoccupied in months, others in decades, and others in centuries. Accuracy is as important for analysts as it is for governments.

At moments as serious as the nuclear crisis in Japan, we all -- experts, journalists, officials, and
corporate executives -- have a duty to fully inform the public. And to trust them with the simple truth.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/03/18/meltdowns_and_misinformation?page=0,1