Posted on 06/07/2011 8:53:50 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Japan Concedes Severity of Blast
Nuclear Disaster Strained Relations With U.S. in Days After the Meltdown
By CHESTER DAWSON, MITSURU OBE and PETER LANDERS
Japan disclosed Monday that its nuclear accident was more severe in its first days than it had previously admitted—casting new light on how Tokyo's early handling of the disaster briefly sent its relations with the U.S. into one of the tensest periods in years.
Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency on Monday more than doubled its estimate for the amount of radiation released from the plant in the first week of the March disaster and said holes may have formed around pipes attached to reactor containment vessels.
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U.S. and Japanese officials say differences over the accident's severity nearly boiled over in the days after the March 11 earthquake and tsumami that disabled cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear.
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The U.S. was alarmed at the Japanese government's initial response, while Japanese officials resented U.S. demands for more information as they were struggling to come to grips with a natural disaster of unprecedented scale.
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Tokyo's nuclear regulator revealed an apparent leak in the lid of Reactor No. 2's containment vessel. That container was a crucial barrier between the overheating nuclear fuel rods at the reactor and the outside world, and the new information suggests radioactive substances were surging through holes that were collectively the size of a business card.
/snip
In the accident's early days, the U.S. ambassador in Tokyo, John Roos, made "around the clock" phone calls to Japanese officials, according to a U.S. official. Upset by the slow trickle of data from Prime Minister Naoto Kan's office, he began calling Cabinet-level officials representing the ministries of defense, foreign affairs and even finance, this official says.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
I hate to say “I told you so”, but I will, to all the FReepers who said: “Move along, nothing to see here at Fukushima.”
Indeed... I was distraught that Rush and Neal Boortz were soooo heavily into “Nuclear energy is perfectly safe!” speeches that they were ignoring the reality.
“I can picture spooks manning sensors to monitor enemy nuclear activities were surprised to see big bright spot in Japan. Radiation was leaking in every direction, but they were unable to get the messages through the thick skull of TEPCO and Japanese bureaucrats. Those people must have been speechless, wondering, “How could they be so stupid? After all, it is their lives at stake.” “
Isn’t it in the Japanese culture that honor is a heavier item than a life?
Not saying that all Japanese want to die, but to admit error of this magnitude...
Now I realize that it can work two different ways.
1) Since they value their honor, they pay with their lives if it is ruined.
2) They would do anything to keep it even if they have to make many others die needlessly.
Some Japanese executive will eventually shoulder the blame voluntarily. That seems to be the Japanese way. OTOH, if this were in the United States the finger-pointing would be endless.
Make that "European authorities," not idiots who scrambled to buy Geiger counters.
This was a situation where one was better served by understanding the very strong Japanese tendency to prefer “controlled release” news versus “transparency”.
My readings of this situation indicate that some number of years of concentrated effort and incredible engineering will be required to place a control on how much radioactivity is emitted on an ongoing basis. And the number of those years is certainly three and perhaps ten.
Another item I don’t understand is how Japan intends to manage its GDP when it has shut down six nuclear reactors. I don’t think the world has factored in the inevitability of a very noticeable reduction in Japan’s economy from this.
Its still not killing us. I learned all I needed to from Wikipedia and several research papers in the days after the meltdowns.
Try this for some clarity. Read up on Sieverts as well.
I’m not downplaying the disaster here - and it is a disaster, but it could
have been much, much worse if #3 had actually exploded like Chernobyl, which actually isn’t physically possible in these reactor designs.
There will be contamination there for very long time, but its not the end of the world. The whole China syndrome and nuclear contamination fears seem to be proven to be over exaggerated for the last 60 years, so I find it interesting.
Now, I’m not saying things could get worse, because I don’t know, but for now, its still relatively not a big calamity. It will be interesting to watch the health issues of the workers that have been there for the last 3 months though, but I suspect they will grow old just fine, like this guy - http://www.bt.com.bn/features/2011/04/04/hell-and-back-chernobyl-nuclear-jumper. Of course, I’m sure some will die of exposure as well, but not the population in general.
In the coming years, there will be a lot of interesting research papers examining this whole crisis, so it will be fun to watch. I fully accept that in the next 20 years what I write here could be proven 100% positive thinking and I may die of something related to the event, but I kind of doubt it right now.
I can tell you one example of how we are managing this; all office buildings work in the dark during the day, and we go home soon after the sun sets to conserve energy. Its annoying, the offices are hot due to no air conditioning, but in a way, it makes plenty of sense. There’s something about the way life ebbs and flows here that it just always remains acceptable even in the worst of times, and its damned fantastic and exciting most of the time.
The government has asked offices to adopt a “Summer Time” schedule from July 1st, whereby office hours start at 8:30 and end between 5:00-6:00 (My office will close at 5:10 through the end of September), so as to save on electricity.
Its going to suck for years to come to replace the lost power production, but it doesn’t seem like a stupid idea given the seriousness of the situation.
I Agree this stuff is interesting. However most of what we hear is really anti nuclear power propaganda. Nuclear power has killed or injured less people than any other form of power generation.
Leftist don’t like nuclear power because it WORKS.
Thanks, I do appreciate your (I assume) on-the-ground report. Those do not seem like unattainable power reduction practices, and if maybe everyone sacrifices 1-3% of their consumption (though what you state could be a much larger pctage) the crisis can be managed in a way that doesn’t choke off the economy.
Do you, by the way, have the official overall figure for the gross loss of Japanese power generation capacity?
It gets so old on every thread no matter the topic. People have there agenda and nothing will stop that agenda including new news coming out that does not make there agenda perfect.
What makes Freerepublic fantastic is that this is where new information comes and can either stand up to other facts out there or is shown to be bs...this is a clearing house in the fog of propaganda that is the news and in the end only truth is left at the end of the thread if we are lucky. Blind agendas get very old no matter the subject.
1st: I love your tag line!
2nd: You’re right about this. I remember the threads on Fukushima with scores of FReepers in utter denial over the severity of the event and many were critical of the US State Department for telling Americans to evacuate from areas the Japanese were insisting were “safe”.
Myself, I’m acquainted with Japanese culture and it’s a cultural norm of theirs that bad news is never released all at once. It has to do with ‘saving face’ which is a very big deal to the Japanese and with the notion of preventing uncouth panic in the populace. It’s simply a part of who they are.
That said, when the Japanese address a disaster like this a rational person needs to take their culture into account when deciding on a course of action.
If a Japanese official says there is ‘no problem’ that typically means the problem is not so bad that it can’t be covered up.
If a Japanese official says there is a small problem but it is under control that typically means the problem was out of control but they’re hopeful things will be under control soon.
But when three nuclear reactors EXPLODE on live television and a Japanese official insists that there’s ‘no serious problem’ then yu can take it to the bank that the sh*t has no just hit the fan, but smothered it as well.
I read another thread where one frustrated person did say “We told you so!” to those who kept insisting only ‘hysterics’ and ‘fear mongerers’ thought anything was really wrong in Fukushima. The pro nuke apologist on duty hissed back “Oh and I suppose you are HAPPY how this all turned out just so you can be right!” which has to stand in the record books as the most pathetic, spineless, debased, honor-free manner a man has ever employed to concede that he was caught lying, downplaying, and spinning to protect his own nuke-dependent paycheck.
Downthread here I see the new default position is “Hey, three core meltdowns really aren’t even half as bad as people say they are.”
About a week after Fukushima blew, I had to stay away from FR for about a month. I couldn’t take the crap from the pro-nuke people. I was reading on other sites about what was going on and I knew it was extremely bad.
And now it’s being revealed as much worse than any of us thought even, at the time.
Yes - I can’t count the number of times I was ordered to prove that I had nuke credentials to support my comments stating that the situation is serious. Like a layperson couldn’t possibly guess that explosions that vaporize buildings while blowing radioactivity into the air, flushing mass quantities of radioactive sea water through and out of the reactors, leaking spent fuel pools, continuing earthquakes shaking damaged structures, going as long as they did without electricity and not asking foreign nations to rush to restore power (portable)until they retreated from a radiation surge and FINALLY asked the US for help... was a serious situation.
You were wise to stay away from FR at that time - you may have missed reading what some FReepers were willing to write to deny reality and to protect their paycheck at any cost.
Hate to point this out, but if we had a similar accident in the US, our government would behave in the exact same fashion Japan's did. They would have denied core meltdowns and containment breaches for two months. All the while having their stooges shoot down any skeptics to the government line. This Civilization wont last for much longer in its present state and that is all because of people who lie and cover for government criminals and industry criminals. Liars cannot successfully run Nuclear programs.
I agree with both of you.
I just couldn’t stomach reading the lying crap or trying to skip over it, just to find news.
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