1945-08-09
I like how ABC’s nearly 66 years late (it’s not just them - everyone’s getting it wrong). The quote from the video is especially fitting:
... but now two nuclear explosions, sending families fleeing for safety.
The USS Ronald Reagan was moved after three helicopters’ “sensitive detectors went off”? If you need sensitive detectors, it’s not dangerous. It’s easy to take precautionary measures when you’re a warship. (Similarly, many countries are advising that people leave Japan - it’s much easier evacuate with only a few people and somewhere to run to, especially when they can probably pay for their own flights.)
Japan’s distributing potassium iodide pills (a different video I don’t care to track down), which ABC spun as signs of bad news; apparently it was following detection of a small amount of radioactive iodine. With nuclear precautionary measures and PR, it’s damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
One person describes it as “living through hell”. This probably refers to the effects of the tsunami, but ABC makes it sound like it’s the power plant’s fault.
Let’s get real.
The estimated cost of damaged buildings and roads(1) is around £100 billion. The cost of Chernobyl(1) was estimated at $130 billion in 1998 (£81 billion at today’s exchange rate, ignoring inflation). The Chernobyl reactor had a much poorer design, with unsafety features like a giant block of graphite which caught fire. It’s not possible for a Fukushima I meltdown to cost more than the rest of the earthquake/tsunami damage.
(For another comparison, the Bank of Japan has already “added 33 trillion yen to the financial system(1)”. I'm not sure what this means, but it’s roughly £264 billion.)
For your nuke-u-lar news, the BBC seems to be far less sensationalist(1), even doubting the likelihood of "re-criticality" instead of trying to spin it as signs of impending doom.
Robert Cringley wrote a good initial assessment(1) and a followup post(1). I’m no nuclear expert, but they seem to be well-informed assessments.
Lewis Page appears to have written a fairly laissez-faire article(1 2 3) on The Register. It sounded too optimistic when I first read it, and now it’s a bit laughable (So to sum up: all plants are now well on their way to a cold shutdown. Oops). Tuesday's No chance cooling fuel can breach vessels(1 2 3) and Wednesday’s Situation worsens - still no cause for alarm(1 2) are similarly over-optimistic, but I have to agree with the closing paragraphs:
Public perceptions of the disaster in general continue to remain muddled and panicky, with media often conflating the terrible loss of life caused by the quake itself with the situation at Fukushima. But the two are not related: and it remains just about certain that the harm caused by Fukushima will be insignificant compared not just to the quake and tsunami but compared to industrial accidents in general.
Besides, coal causes far more deaths than nuclear power(1). Many people agree (I can no longer find the article I wanted to link, though). It's a classic example of people’s inability to multiply - if you haven’t watched it, Bruce Schneier’s talk Reconceptualizing Security is very good.
So let's call out reporters, newspapers, TV stations, and media conglomerates for sensationalist, misleading, inaccurate, or outright wrong reporting. Democracy (or, indeed, pseudo-democracy) only works when people vote rationally, and people can only make rational decisions when they understand what’s at stake; it’s difficult to claim that the world’s a better place by perverting everyone’s understanding of science, but media outlets are doing just that.
Bad reporting undermines democracy. Shame it gets better ratings.