Posted on 03/15/2011 1:35:02 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
IT'S not bad enough that thousands of people may be dead from Japan's earthquake and devastating tsunami. No, the media is instead obsessing over a nuclear reactor that has killed no one and probably never will.
This scaremongering over the crippled Fukushima nuclear complex is extraordinary. Already anti-nuclear activists, rebadged as nuclear "experts", are out spreading terror.
And what's a nuclear holocaust story without Helen Caldicott, actually a paediatrician and anti-nuke hysteric? So there she was, too, on 3AW, warning that if the reactor blew up, "hundreds of thousands of Japanese will be dying within two weeks of acute radiation illness", with countless more later suffering an "epidemic" of cancers.
But wait. Time to check the facts and get some perspective.
Let's start with Ruff. If the Fukushima reactor indeed becomes a "Chernobyl disaster", it will still be as nothing compared with the devastation the Japanese have already suffered.
Right now, rescue workers are combing through the ruins of the seaside cities swamped by the tsunami, looking for 10,000 missing people.
By contrast, Chernobyl, the world's worst nuclear power station disaster, is known to have killed no more than 65.
Yes, I know this doesn't fit with all the horror stories that activists and journalists spread about Chernobyl.
Yes, I know that even the Gillard Government's Education Minister, Peter Garrett, has warned that the 1986 explosion at Chernobyl's shambolic nuclear reactor "caused the deaths of more than 30,000 people".
I know that Sweeney's ACF once published on its website a paper claiming the death toll was actually 250,000 people. And I heard Caldicott on Wednesday trump them all by insisting "nearly a million" died.
But the most reliable assessment of the deaths in that iconic disaster comes instead from the Chernobyl Forum, which represents Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, as well as all relevant United Nations agencies, including the World Health Organisation and International Atomic Energy Agency.
After reviewing countless studies, the forum in 2005 concluded much of the reporting of the deaths was a beat-up.
"Claims have been made that tens or even hundreds of thousands of persons have died as a result of the accident. These claims are highly exaggerated."
In fact, there was "no demonstrated increase in the incidence of solid cancers or leukemia due to radiation in the most affected populations", and no "clear and convincing evidence for a radiation-induced increase in general population mortality".
There was only one exception: thyroid cancer in children, which killed 15. Thankfully, this is treatable, which is why the Japanese authorities are handing out iodine tablets.
To those 15, the Chernobyl Forum added 28 reactor workers who died from acute radiation sickness, three more who died at the explosion from other causes, and 19 who died over the years that followed, from various causes related to the blast.
The deaths of these 65 people is undoubtedly a tragedy. But when set beside the 10,000 feared drowned by this tsunami , they are almost as nothing.
And they represent a fraction of the heartache caused not by the Chernobyl explosion but by the panic merchants who stampeded more than 200,000 women from Italy to Norway into having abortions, through a baseless fear their children would be deformed.
But is Fukushima even likely to become a "Chernobyl-type disaster'?
No, say the true experts.
First, "there is no possibility of a nuclear explosion," Richard Wakeford, of the University of Manchester's Dalton Research Institute, says.
Ziggy Switkowski, former chairman of the Australian Nuclear and Scientific Organisation agrees. There just isn't enough uranium in the reactor.
And don't let the breathless reports of the explosions already at the Fukushima complex fool you.
They are not nuclear explosions, but the detonation of hydrogen released through the emergency cooling process.
These explosions, outside the steel and concrete containment vessels in which the nuclear fuel is held, are very different to the ones at Chernobyl, which occurred within the vessel and tore apart the reactor.
That in turn caused the graphite used in that reactor to catch fire and burn for four days, releasing plumes of highly radioactive waste into the air.
Fukushima, though, uses not graphite but water, which does not burn. What radioactivity has been released is some caesium-137 and iodine-131 carried with the steam that's been vented to ease pressure in the reactors, where the cooling systems have been crippled.
Not healthy, but so far not likely to kill you even if you breathed deeply. And the winds are taking it out to sea.
So far, the vessels containing the fuel rods themselves are intact, and the reactor is also built to contain any "meltdown", avoiding the Hollywood scenario of a "China syndrome", in which the molten reactor core burns right through, figuratively, to China.
Much may yet go wrong. More explosions may crack the containment vessels, potentially releasing radiation.
More steam will be vented. But with the area evacuated, the risk of people being killed is close to nil - except for about 50 brave staff who are taking the chance of being blown up.
With luck, the moral of this emergency may turn out to be the opposite of the one now preached by people who prefer myths to fact, fear to understanding.
Fukushima is one of the oldest of the nuclear power stations that supply a third of Japan's electricity, and has been rocked by the worst earthquakes in Japan in a century.
It has suffered multiple failures of its cooling systems. It has been battered by explosions.
And if it can take all that without cracking ...
Add to that the lessons Japan's experts will learn from this, and these grim days may yet mark the time not when the nuclear industry died, but when it learnt how to survive even an apocalypse.
There's Dr Tilman Ruff, actually a Nossal Institute infectious diseases expert and long-time anti-nukes activist, everywhere warning we might be "looking at a Chernobyl-type disaster or worse" and describing in lascivious detail the ways people could get sick from the fallout.
There's Dave Sweeney, actually a professional activist from the Australian Conservation Foundation with a lack of formal qualifications in nuclear science, warning that the reactor was potentially like a kettle without water, and "sooner or later, it superheats and it blows".
spoil sport
ping
What we need is someone good at explaining the difference between radiation emitted by the reactor vs radioactive fallout. Maybe even some decent drawings.
I personally describe the reactor as a lightbulb. The “light” emitted from it isn’t carried by the wind. Radioactive dust and smoke are carried by the wind.
In the meantime there was just another explosion in the past few minutes..
Don’t worry though, all is well.
There is no such thing, in the liberal mind, as a tragedy that can’t be exploited.
Remain calm. Everything is under control.
b
I’m more worried about the return of Godzilla.
I’m still waiting for the seafloor to cave in after the BP spill. Or am I waiting to die because of the dispersant used?
I forget.
RE: In the meantime there was just another explosion in the past few minutes..
SOURCE:
IAN HORE-LACY OF THE WORLD NUCLEAR ASSOCIATION, AN INDUSTRY BODY REPRESENTING 180 COMPANIES IN THE NUCLEAR SECTOR
“It is obviously an hydrogen explosion ... due to hydrogen igniting. If the hydrogen has ignited, then it is gone, it doesn’t pose any further threat.”
“The whole situation is quite serious but the actual hydrogen explosion doesn’t add a great deal to it.”
He said it was “most unlikely to be a major disaster” and he also did not believe there would be a full fuel meltdown.
“That would have been much more likely early yesterday in the European time. We are now 24 hours into the situatiuon and the fuel has cooled a lot in that time and the likelihood of meltdown at this stage I would think would be very, very small.”
There is no such thing, in the liberal mind, as a tragedy that can’t be exploited.
Or run away from. TOTUS is off to Rio (opposite hemisphere, opposite side of the world) until this blows over and maybe Saudi invasion of Bahrain, and the war in Libya or Afghanistan, or the 10+% unemployment or failing financial system or ...
Thanks for the post. Bookmarking for later to see how the comments are rolling.
There an article on FR about people ordering Iodine Tablets like crazy. I wonder if we should buy some too.
Spent nuke fuel pool may be boiling, further radiation leak feared
The Media has finally gotten what it wanted....
“Panicked residents start to flee Tokyo”
FLY SOME MORE REPORTERS TO JAPAN.......Especially the ones that can’t speak the language, they won’t understand the insults from the Locals.
Let’s all chill out for a moment and think things through...
Remember, it is IMPOSSIBLE for a nuclear reactor to explode like an atomic bomb.
All that can happen is what amounts to a conventional explosion throwing radiaton from a melting core into the atmosphere. That would be a big roblem for Japan (although not the end of life as we know it—you may remember Nagasaki and Hiroshima).
It would not be a problem for the United States. We’re far away.
Remember, in the 1950s we tested HYDROGEN BOMBS in the Pacific. Yes, that was not a good thing. But it hardly caused any major problems in the United States.
This is a case of the media ( yes, Fox News included) simply trhowing out fear mongering to try to build an audience.
There is no excuse for it, and Fox engaged in the same kind of fear mongering in more important reports. INFORMATION is what the “news” should be about, and not fear mongering SPECULATION.
Sure, the nuclear plant situation in Japan is a problem, especially for Japan, but it is absurd to suggest that the “job” of the media is to HYPE the problem. The news should be about facts and information, and not about FEAR (and ratings).
I trust Katie.
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