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I'm putting this email on my blog by request, as an example that there is a lot of fear-mongering and disinformation going around. It's hard to know which "experts" to trust. I agree that is a real problem. The point here is that I trust a voice like http://www.mitnse.com that is clearly trying to disseminate information with data and references, over a voice like geniusnow.com or even the Huffington post, which seem to be distributing FUD due to anti-nuclear politics. Caveat: I'm an engineer, but I'm not a nuclear engineer or a nuclear scientist and am in no way an expert in the field. My friend Sean (below) is a former experimental nuclear physicist, but is also not a nuclear engineer nor an expert in reactor design. Still, I strongly value his ability to analyze and filter the various information streams and come up with an accurate picture of what is happening. On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 11:31 PM, Tony wrote: > There's been some disagreement over the credibility of the original Morgsatlarge blog post and its author: > > http://www.boingboing.net/2011/03/15/an-expert-in-one-fie.html> http://geniusnow.com/2011/03/15/the-strange-case-of-josef-oehmen/I saw some of this yesterday, Tony. There's also talk on Salon and other places about whether this is "industry spin" or whether Dr. Oehmen claimed to be an expert when he wasn't. He was just trying to explain the safeguards in a reactor, and was glad enough to hand off the article to MIT to be vetted. I was talking to some friends that are nuclear scientists, and they concur that the content (even the version regurgitated by Glenn Beck) was accurate. Even "geniusnow" concurs: "How much credibility can we give the content? No matter how good it is, none." Ha ha, no credibility for good content. Genius Now seems like a crank. Authored by "The Magus", he complains that he can't figure out who is authoring mitnse.com and brings up DNS records ( http://geniusnow.com/2011/03/16/mitnse-com-where-theres-smoke/) to show it is "propaganda" (not that I can tell what content he actually thinks is propaganda). He argues the site can't be maintained by MIT NSE because it's hosted as a wordpress site, which is crazy logic. I suspect they cloud-sourced the site because of the traffic it was getting. Clearly, it IS supported my MIT: http://mitnse.com points to http://web.mit.edu/nse/ and http://web.mit.edu/nse/ says "Visit NSE's blog: mitnse.com". Of course, then "Magus" also tries to make the case that MIT itself is a shill for the Nuclear Power industry. So... don't trust anything coming out of our top Universities? Clearly there are divisions over Nuclear power and it's safety. I think it's a good point that we need to evaluate our information sources, and issues like "reputation" and "expertise" can be thorny to establish quickly. But given divisive nature of this issue, you have to expect that people are going to push-back when someone tries to make the case that Nuclear Energy is safe. I'm especially disheartened when a site like mitnse.com is attacked when all it is really doing is reporting (in the journalistic sense of the word) facts and data with references. When it does present an explanation that it thinks might contain any bias (Josef Oehmen's blog) there are tons of disclaimers. This reminds me of the current attacks on NPR by the right. (Side note: it was odd this morning listening to NPR dispassionately covering the pending bill that seeks to defund NPR.) Relatedly, here's a distillation from my friend Sean, who is a former experimental nuclear physicist currently working in high performance computing, giving a few of us his read on today's Fukushima status: HI
I was worried yesterday about the fuel pond at reactor 4 and it continues to be a concern. The pond has been running around 84c the last few days which means coolant wasn't properly circulating (should be more like 20-30c). They are no longer getting readings from the temp sensors in the pond which the US has taken to mean the pond is empty. The Japanese are saying that they have seen water in the pond from a helicopter so it is possible that the sensors are damaged or maybe just the wires from them are broken. One of the pumps for that pond appears to have caught fire yesterday. Probably damage from the initial disaster. The fire could be why the sensors are no longer working.
Radiation in the area is ranging from 100-400 mSv/hr which is a high dose and is hindering workers. The Japanese think the high radiation is coming from reactor 3 which they are trying to cool with fire hoses and water cannons. They have also tried helicopter water drops but they don't seem to have been effective because the helos can't get low enough due to the radiation levels. Despite all this, radiation at the border of the site is down to .64 mSv/hr from a high of 3.39 mSv/hr yesterday. Still a concerning amount but not life threatening. That means that fuel is not "burning" in some pond burning and spewing radioactive isotopes into the air at this point. That's a good thing. My guess is that the high radiation they are seeing is due to fuel rods in reactor 3 having at least partially melted. I can see that melted uranium pools might cause a slight increase in decay rate as the control rods that absorb neutrons wouldn't work properly. The borated water mitigates that quite a bit so it wouldn't be a huge increase but these things produce megawatts of heat so even a small increase means you need to dump lots of water on the thing to cool it.
They're supposed to get external power back to the site today. That hopefully will result in all the coolant pumps coming back online which should quickly bring things back into equilibrium. No certainty there though as no one has said if the electric pumps were damaged by the earthquake or tsunami. Keep your fingers crossed. While I'm not overly worried about the public I do feel for the rad workers who are getting elevated doses of radiation. They are potentially giving up a few years of their life expectancy to keep this situation under control. The plant suffered 100 casualties, dead and injured, during the initial earthquake and tsunami. These engineers are missing friends and who knows how their families fared off site. We should not forget that this is a human tragedy.
SeanTags: fukushima nuclear mitnse morgsatlarge ge
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August 16th is going to suck for San Francisco. Starting at 10 AM, there is the dress rehearsal for disaster. Not one but TWO "simulated nuclear attacks." In an unplanned coincidence... later that day at 2 PM, a hoard of brain/duct-tape eating zombies will flood the streets of San Francisco. This is a good example of a day going from bad to worse. Man: Oh crap, we got hit be two nuclear attacks. This sucks. Woman: Yeah, that stinks all right, almost as bad as that horde of undead marching down Market Street. Might be a good morning to head downtown for a breakfast burrito and a haircut. Tags: nuclear zombies armageddon
Current Location: San Francisco
Current Mood: on red alert
Current Music: Warren Zevon's Werewolves of London
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Case received this in his email recently, we are all assuming that it's spam, but I guess maybe it isn't: Case> this is a new one. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: adamsjamil9 Gazeta.pl <adamsjamil9@gazeta.pl> Date: Sat, May 17, 2008 at 6:36 AM Subject: Mr SOMEONE YOU CALL YOUR FRIEND, WANTS YOU DEAD. To: undisclosed-recipients I felt very sorry and bad for you, that your life is going to end like this if you don't comply. I was paid to eliminate you and I have to do it within 10 days. ( Read more... )
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jameswelcher's journal
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The "Guardians of the Internet", the "hacker" group Anonymous and friends, have formed 