Fear the Media Meltdown, Not the Nuclear One

[Geee]

Pajamas Media:

The March 11 earthquake off the coast of Japan has been an unprecedented disaster. Now estimated to have been a magnitude 9 earthquake — one of the top five earthquakes measured since reporting started in 1900 — it was the result of a “megathrust” in which an area of sea floor bigger than the state of Connecticut broke free and moved under the force of colliding tectonic plates. It was so strong that it literally moved the entire island of Honshu eight feet to the east. The earthquake was then followed by a tsunami comparable to the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 — but since the epicenter of the quake was only a few miles off the coast of Japan, the tsunami struck the heavily populated coast of Honshu with almost no warning, basically washing many coastal villages off the face of the earth.

The earthquake and tsunami seriously damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi (“number one”) and Daini (“number two”) in Okuma, in Fukushima Prefecture, and also damaged the Onagawa plant in Miyagi Prefecture. In total, of the 55 nuclear power generation plants in Japan, 11 have been forced to shut down, cutting power generation capacity in Japan dramatically and forcing the country to adopt a series of rolling blackouts. It would seem impossible to overstate the severity of the crisis.

The media, however, has risen to the challenge, with a combination of poor information, ignorance, and alarmism, along with antinuclear activists passing themselves off as unbiased experts.

Let’s try to make some sense of it all.

Basics of How Reactors Work

The Fukushima plants have several reactors built on the same basic design, either by GE or by Japanese companies licensed by GE. These are all “boiling water” reactors, which means just what it sounds like: the heat of the nuclear reaction boils water; the steam generated is used to drive turbines and thereby generate power. The water in direct contact with the reactor core known as “coolant” is nothing particularly special, just demineralized; water itself isn’t very susceptible to becoming radioactive, but minerals and contaminants in the water can be. If the water is purified, there’s less radioactive waste to deal with.

[Chickadee]

Thanks for posting this article, Geee. From the beginning I had the feeling it was the anti-nuclear people who were giving out excitable predictions of doom and gloom. I am going to pass this article on to as many people as possible in hopes that "containment" of the false information might be possible.

[Pepper]

Fake image of nuclear meltdown risk going around the Internet

[Sabre86]

Fake image of nuclear meltdown risk going around the Internet

Sadly, it even made it onto CNN once the other day, but they quickly pulled it and said it was bogus.

 

I've seen it all over the place. A nice looking, official map, but complete bunk.

 

Radiation from Chernobyl didn't reach 750 rads a few miles from the plant, much less 5,500.