Fukushima: What Happened and What Needs To Be Done 370
IndigoDarkwolf writes "The sometimes confused media coverage around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant left me wanting for a good summary. Apparently the BBC felt the same way, and now delivers an overview starting from the earthquake and concluding with the current state of the troubled reactors."
Persective (Score:5, Insightful)
Pity that the nuclear problems seemed to overshadow all the vastly more important and tragic aspects of the quake and tsunami.
Re:Persective (Score:5, Insightful)
What quake and what tsunami?
What do you mean, "what happened?" (Score:2, Insightful)
There was a massive earthquake followed by an equally massive tsunami that buried the plant under 10 feet of water. That's what happened.
Earthquakes of that magnitude are rare. There have only been 6 in the world since 1900, and none of those were in Japan.
Re:Not much and nothing? (Score:1, Insightful)
Reality will continue to disagree.
Re:Not much and nothing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Slashdot will be swamped with nuclear power industry apologists pretending "Not much and nothing" happened. Dissent will be modded to oblivion.
Reality will continue to disagree.
Then, as per Slashdot's usual and customary behavior, nuclear power haters will chime in with some hyperbolic argument in the opposite direction, citing such illustrious sources as YouTube, Wikipedia and the Daily Mail.
Meanwhile, someone will opine that it's George W. Bush's fault (or Dick Cheney, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates or the Easter Bunny). Several hundred posts will go back and forth covering exactly the same arguments and counterarguments as the last 200 times these subjects were brought up.
The minuscule but apparently earth shattering differences between Democrats and Republicans will be brought up again. Op Cit.
An obscure component manufacturer somewhere in the Pacific Rim announces a major order for some bleeding-edge piece of technology that could conceivably become part of an expensive, digital-lifestyle-enhancing nerd toy.....
Important Events Missing from BBC Timeline (Score:3, Insightful)
Day 1 - pro-nuclear activists claim there's nothing wrong, there's no danger, containment is fine, no radiation will leak
Day 2 - pro-nuclear activists claim there's nothing wrong, there's no danger, containment is fine, radiation leaks are minor
Day 3 - pro-nuclear activists claim there's nothing wrong, there's no danger, containment breach hardly matters
Day 4 - pro-nuclear activists claim there's nothing wrong, there's minimal danger
...
Day N - pro-nuclear activists claim nobody could have predicted a Tsunami on the Japanese coastline
Nice but a little late (Score:5, Insightful)
It's nice that the Beeb has released this fairly calm and unbiased recap, but less sensationalistic coverage from the start would have been a whole lot nicer.
I've been watching the coverage of this story on a bunch of different sites for the past few weeks, and this [mitnse.com] is the best I've found - the MIT nuclear science and engineering site. Well written factual articles about the situation, almost entirely devoid of speculation and fearmongering, along with background articles on stuff like how toxic Plutonium is, how radiation doses are measured, etc.
Unfortunately Ivo Vegter [thedailymaverick.co.za] is entirely correct: Every mainstream journalist out there should hang their heads in shame in regards to how their profession has covered this incident.
We can't handle the technology! (Score:5, Insightful)
We need to accept that we are not capable of cutting through the BS and making clear decisions where highly toxic, unstable, and corrosive substances are handled in a complex manner for great profit (hundreds of millions of dollars).
Put another way, we need trusted technologists to tell us if things are safe or not. Apparently these can be bought when there is lots of money to be made.
At best, people don't think clearly. At worst, we are being lied to and as a result people die and whole regions are rendered toxic.
Re:Not much and nothing? (Score:3, Insightful)
I humbly submit the radical notion that instead of a need to produce more electricity, people could learn to use less.
Re:Persective (Score:4, Insightful)
Not really.
The Japanese have a saying for situations like the earthquake, Tsunami and the immediate aftermath: "It can't be helped." There's nothing that can be done about the tens of thousands of people who were killed. For the most part everything that can be done for the survivors is being done.
The Fukushima situation is not a misfortune on the scale of the tsunami, but it *is* an ongoing crisis. What sets a crisis apart from a misfortune is that it generates a never-ending stream of new and unexpected questions to be answered. What shall we do about the radioactive water when we don't know where its coming from? What should we do about the effect of radioactivity releases on the food supply? How are we going to put this situation to bed with a team that's been working in crisis mode for a month straight?
Of course the immediate run-up to and aftermath of the tsunami was a crisis too, but now we no longer have a parade of new and unexpected problems, but rather a collection lingering and intractable ones. Those demand attention too, but that doesn't mean you can write off the Fukushima situation as something not meriting much attention.