Why I don't trust the Press Communications, either

[LCHIEN]

Yeah the press is full of bad information. When they talk about technical topics I know and understand I see so many errors. If they have the same error rate on other topics I have an overall sketicism of stuff on which they report.

Case in point:
A recent article about the nuclear plant issues, one reporter in a respectable publication quoted an "expert" who said basically that the nuclear industry has for years accepted a risk estimate of one meltdown per 10,000 reactor years. He went on to say the equivalent of 500 reactors have been operating an average of 30 years now (my note: that equates to 15,000 reactor-years of experience) and there have now been at least 3 partial melt downs (TMI, Chernobyl, and Fukushima) so that the actual rate is now 1 in hundreds. Actually I'm inclined to count fukushima as three partial meltdowns but still 3/15,000 or 5 in 15,000 is only 1 in 5000 or 1 in 3000. Is the reporter who is reporting on technical stuff not smart enough to see the total error in this guy's calculations or understand what he is reporting to be wrong?

Another case in point also relating to the nuclear incident:
A publication reported yesterday on the report of radioactivity found in the seawater 300 meters from Fukushima being 1250 times more radioactive than normal. But he said that the radioactive iodine would break down and be gone in 8 days (apparently referring to the half life of Iodine 131). Anyone who remembers his high school physics and exponential decay knows that the iodine does not go away in 8 days, only half of it is gone in 8 days so that after 8 days, the radiation will only be 625 time normal and after 16 days, 312 times normal. Sounds a whole lot worse, eh?

Now there's an issue of whether the reporter is at fault here or if his source is at fault. Who bears the responsibility if the source makes a glaring error easily spotted by a technical person who is NOT even an expert in the field? Is the reporter simply reporting or should he have asked for clarification? Is he not responsible for finding expert spokespersons? Either way it makes everything published tainted by its lack of correctness.

I use knowledge of things I understand to calibrate someone who is telling me stuff about it. So when reading about things I don't understand in the least If they failed to impress me I won't believe much of what they are saying. I only wish news organizations had technical reviewers...

[herb fellows]

As you say, it's not limited to technical stories.

I worked for a guy who was killed by the mafia (he didn't pay up in time, and pretty much told them to go fly a kite).

The amount of misinformation in several newspapers over the next few days
was astounding! Virtually every fact that I knew, they got wrong. Names, dates, places, addresses, everything! It was quite an eye opener.

[jackellis]

It's not just the facts that you have to assess. As I was taught in high school, the masthead of the New York Time should read, "All the News That Fits the Print".

It's also not just newspaper reporters. Lobbyists and other advocates also often omit or twist facts as they try to influence government and regulatory policy. One of my favorites of late was a brief written by the late Alfred Kahn, also known as the father of airline deregulation. He was a respected economist, but he advocated a policy that would allow electricity consumers to be paid for not using electricity, even though they had never purchased the electricity they were being paid not to use in the first place. We'll all be paying the price for a long time.

[leehljp]

Loring,

I admired the informational FACTS that you and JimD pulled up and the explanations of them, even though you disagreed on some. I much prefer the facts myself, however I also know that the human side distorts them. I am not saying that I am skeptical of all news, but my mind instantly goes to "what is the message behind the message?"

The facts and figures that you fellows found were great. That helps figure out the misinformation that comes out in the news.

[Pappy]

Oh, to have Uncle Walter back.......

Those of his era believed their job was to report the facts!

[JimD]

The update for today is that TEPCO is at least asking the U. S. industry experts for more information - it looks like they will accept at least some assistance. There was to be a second day of discussions and I do not know the result of that yet.

I read NEI and JAIF updates because I think they are pretty factual. NEI uses the U. S. units for radiation which I understand easier.

NBC was suggesting last Friday (or maybe it was Thursday) on their national news that they do not want to alarm people. But I think this is disingenuous. I think they slide things towards the sensational intentionally because it helps their add revenue. Some is clearly just a mistake but when they have a choice to say "no problem" they are not nearly as eager to say it as they are to say "problem".

Jim

[sailor55330]

With all due respect, "Uncle Walter" was a unique figure in television journalism. What made him so unique was that he was one of the first to interject his own opinions and not just the facts. He wasn't the staight fact-guru that many thought he was. He did however, do it in a much more subtle way than his successors do today. According to many of the classes I took as well as some of my journalism major freinds in college, he was the father of our modern-day sensationalism we have in journalism today. Everyone will need to make their own judgement about that.

There have been some interesting posts, insights, and thoughts recently about the culture, the communication, the technology, and the actual situational status. What I have seen/read leads me to the conclusion that the Japanese government is not disclosing the truth and that the situation is much more severe that is being "officially" reported. Some members of the board have tried to draw conclusions based on what facts are available, while others seem to be taking what is presented as total disclosure. Others have added the cultural element as an explanation for the level of communication accuracy.

I can guarantee the reactor(s) aren't repairing themselves and the reports aren't really getting any better. When is enough enough--it's time for outside interaction (not from just the US), even at the expense of the Japanese pride and culture as this situation potentially affects more than just the population of Japan. TIme to pull the head(s) out of the sand.

[JimD]

I seems things are moving slowly but that is more understandable when you have seen how things move normally at nuclear power plants. There is a whole lot of "hurry up and wait". As soon as one group is ready to work another necessary piece is not. And then when the second constraint is resolved the first one is now a problem. Work is done to written procedures requiring multiple levels of approval. That is to avoid things like people doing work without the necessary protective equipment. (as an aside, the first shipment of material I know of we made was of protective equipment so the Japanese know they need this) But even though we deliberately slow down to try and get calmer, cooler, heads to review the work up-front, mistakes happen.

Once some form of cooling is in place for the core and the pits, time helps, it does not hurt the situation. The radioactivity decreases with time and the thermal energy is dissipated. Any melting of the fuel will not occur with cooling and is much less likely even if cooling was lost now that a couple weeks of cooling has occurred.

The recovery efforts will takes months and years, not hours or days. The plants are now much more radioactive than they would be normally and that slows things down a lot. It is much harder to work in protective equipment and more pre-planning is necessary. It may be frustrating for those of us that want this to be over but I don't think we can reasonably expect everything to go back to normal ever for this site. What we can expect in a few weeks is leakage of radioactive material to cease. Cooling is first priority. Second will be leakage. The industry knows that has to stop quickly. It is not that anything terrible is occurring. It just looks very, very bad. Once the cooling systems are functioning normally, the site will quickly move to eliminating leakage.

[LCHIEN]

...
I can guarantee the reactor(s) aren't repairing themselves and the reports aren't really getting any better. When is enough enough--it's time for outside interaction (not from just the US), even at the expense of the Japanese pride and culture as this situation potentially affects more than just the population of Japan. TIme to pull the head(s) out of the sand.

Another side of the press is that they never seem to answer the questions (maybe they don't ask the right ones) I want to ask.

Like how many gallons, liters whatever of radioactive water are they going to have to pump out? Sure make a big diffrence in the size of the task esp. when you've got to store it somewhere.

Another question I want to know - where's the robots? Finally saw an article on this - the Japanese have none, they been making home robots for mass market instead of ones for hazardous duty. After the last earthquake they said they needed some but then cut funding off after a year.

Germany has some standing by, also France, and the US. But Japan/TEPCO has not accepted their offers yet (what are they waiting for?). Nuclear rad-hardened electronics, able to climb stairs and lift fuel rods. Most of these were built by nuclear institutes because there is no commercial market for robots that were supposed to be used once in a century.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/nation...ClB_story.html

[LCHIEN]

OK, here's another one.
Everyone's seen this picture, it's been posted on all the news its purportedly a japanese worker in a radiation suit pointing at the crack in the pit that's leaking radioactive water into the ocean.
(Reuters picture)

But in the media text they all says its a 20cm wide crack (8 inches) [inch measurement conversion provided in media text].

Clearly looking at that picture its not an 8 inch crack. Maybe 1 inch at the most. Did they get 20 cm and 20 mm mixed up? Can anyone explain this to me?

If that's an 8" crack then the man in the radiation suit is King Kong.

[LCHIEN]

The words coming from the Jpanese Gov't and Tepco have been guarded and very conservative as far as admitting that things have gone wrong. Maybe this is extreme but I had visions of the Tepco press release saying "radioactivity at the plant is 10,000 times normal but we have not found a crack (because the radiation is too high to send a team in) so its likely not our reactor is breached..."

The US has been more critical, stating unreservedly that the No. 2 reactor has breached. How do they know??? Here's an interesting article on Nuclear forensics which states how labs and researchers have modeled nuclear reactors like the ones at Fukushima and can tell you pretty accurately what's gone wrong given times w/o cooling and proportions of different particle emissions, radiation levels, and other clues that have been given.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/sc...3meltdown.html

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article...f-Japan-Crisis

[leehljp]

But in the media text they all says its a 20cm wide crack (8 inches) [inch measurement conversion provided in media text].

Clearly looking at that picture its not an 8 inch crack. Maybe 1 inch at the most. Did they get 20 cm and 20 mm mixed up? Can anyone explain this to me?

I would say that it is a media writer's mistake. They use the word senchi for centimeter and miri for milimeter. This was one area that I never had problems conversing with people and them knowing it. However, when a mistake was written by someone, either directly in English or in translation, they generally will say what is written even if they know it to be wrong.

I didn't hear the news cast but I did see it. LOML heard it and she also said that they said 8 inches.