Japan: epicenter of disaster
There’s the quake, and then there’s the aftermath. Sometimes, as in Japan today, the latter is worse than the former.
Not that the former wasn’t really really bad. It was, and it lasted for over two minutes. I’ve been in several quakes in California of moderate magnitude (which is many thousands of times less than the force of this one), and the most each ever lasted was probably 15 seconds, if that. I cannot imagine how endless and terrifying this one must have seemed.
So far, the resultant tsunami seems to have caused the majority of deaths. Now, even drinking water is a problem in some areas. And then, of course, there are those nuclear power plants that have been dangerously compromised. Because Japan was a pioneer in nuclear power, quite a few of its plants are around forty years old, and were built in a time of lesser seismic activity in which earthquake protections were more lax. The newer ones are better, but all portions of the old ones had not been sufficiently updated.
Many people in the comments section here have noted the abysmal ignorance about earthquakes and nuclear power plants exhibited almost uniformly by the press. Not only are they uninformed, they don’t seem to be taking the time and proper steps to become informed, and are fear-mongering and comparing the reactors in Japan to that in Chernobyl, which had a different design. Could it be that they have an agenda?
One of Japan’s exports in the post-WWII years has been disaster movies. This is one come to life, minus the monsters (although if we wait a bit, maybe…). Although Japan is used to earthquakes, it’s not used to something of this magnitude, which sweeps away—along with the houses, boats, trains, and people—the illusion of control
Neo,
You write: “. . . Not only are they uninformed, they don’t seem to be taking the time and proper steps to become informed, and are fear-mongering . . . .”
No surprise here, for this is what the press always does and always did. IMO the so-called golden age of an objective press never existed. Most newspapers, for example, began life in the 19th century as mouthpieces for a political party. Even today there are numerous newspapers which contain “. . .-Democrat” or “. . .-Republican” in their names.
The electronic media is no different. To sensationalize is to draw eyeballs and thus to sell column-inches or advertising minutes. Even the legendary Walter Cronkite (who, himself, was revealed to have politicized the news) said that adjectives and adverbs are not reporting, they’re editorializing. Sensationalizing is nothing more than editorializing on steroids.
The illusion of control?
The illusion of total control, yes, but feedback is part of control. New designs, new placements, and hopefully the education of many will provide even more control.
Is this a case of over reaching? Is it a case like Challenger? I don’t think so. Man was given dominion and stewardship of this earth by God. There’s no reason to court fatalism. God has made a home for, not against, us.
Abortion in America has been a much greater tragedy. Islam in India has been a much greater tragedy. Liberalism has been a much greater tragedy. Imagine all those tragedies never occurring and the wealth and resources mankind would have to respond to a non-manmade disaster.
“One of Japan’s exports in the post-WWII years has been disaster movies.”
Not to be an armchair psychologist, but I can’t help wondering if their focus on such disaster movies has something to do with the constant physical threats continuously faced by the country.
This is a nuclear reactor 101 course linked by a Gateway commenter. The author seems to know his stuff and what he says seems to agree with Sergey’s link at yesterday’s post. I know nothing about the topic, but I tend to prefer people who keep their thinking caps on when something bad happens.
What do you science/technology people think of this evaluation?
http://morgsatlarge.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/why-i-am-not-worried-about-japans-nuclear-reactors/
Did you all hear about the volcano eruption to the south of the quake? How much can these people take?
expat, that’s a great article at the link. Good sound explanation. Of course you have to believe that technology will save us, a faith that resides only selectively in our liberal friends.
“”IMO the so-called golden age of an objective press never existed.””
T
I agree. But i can’t help to think journalist in the past had a more well rounded education. When a subject like this nuclear issue comes up you can just tell these journalist today put all their preperation into articulate delivery and the appearance of knowledge. But they don’t know shit. And i’m sick of hearing their shit. It is beyond non informative.
Illusion of control is a hallmark of Western civilization after industrial revolution. Japanese have almost nothing with it, they still are fatalists. As for the article expat linked, it is almost completely accurate, except for there are other sources of hydrogen accumulation beyond thermal dissociation, namely chemical reaction and radiolysis. Author also confused two types of water-cooled reactors: boiling water reactor, which can operate at near atmospheric pressure, and pressurised reactors, where water is not allowed to boil but is kept liquid by pressure around 200 atm. Only the second type can be compared to pressure cooker. Reactor that failed was boiling water type.
SteveH,
I don’t know for a fact, but I think that journalists of earlier years had a less thorough education than they do now (at least in terms of credentials). Remember, the stereotype of the shirt-sleeved cigarette-smoking hard-drinking reporter pounding away at a typewriter was more in the blue-collar image than in a college-educated image.
I think the difference might be that they were LESS informed then and they knew it, so they took the time to learn something (at least sometimes). The credentrialed reporters of today THINK they know a lot, but the 5 Ws of reporting (who, what, when, where and why) usually take a back seat to editorializing with adjectives and adverbs. “This DEVASTATING tsunami. . . ” is editorializing. It might be true, but it’s editorializing nonetheless.
T-
you two might be talking past each other; I get the impression that old-time reporters had a better grasp of the world they lived in and the general culture (there are a lot more mythical/literary references, the grade-level of writing is higher), while modern ones are very well educated in “how to be a reporter.”
If nothing else, the moder ones seem to have great confidence in their biases and impressions being the last scientific word.
The Japanese catastrophe is a heaven-sent Godsend… Whoops, I meant a gift from Allah…For the dithering folks in charge of our foreign policy.
“Libya? What Libya? They’re dying in Japan.”
Uhh, Japan is not a man-caused disaster like Libya, is it, Comrade?
“We can’t do anything in the near term to prevent earthquakes. We must ‘invest’ 25% of the West’s income for the next 50 years in research to prevent future earthquakes. Earthquakes usually hit those who have not proportionally shared in the Earth’s wealth, for which we, I mean, I apologize. Our target must be, no earthquakes greater than 6.0 on the Richter scale (spoken with authority-ed.)”
But meanwhile Qaddafhi is killing his own people in the hundreds, Comrade. He’s a man, not an earthquake.
“We must devote our attention to the Big, and I mean Cosmic, picture.”
I see, Comrade Baraq. Thank you for taking my questions, sir.
“I think the difference might be that they were LESS informed then and they knew it, so they took the time to learn something (at least sometimes). The credentrialed reporters of today THINK they know a lot, but the 5 Ws of reporting (who, what, when, where and why) usually take a back seat to editorializing with adjectives and adverbs.”
100% agreement with this. The old-school “Front Page” reporters with a stogie dangling out of the corner of their mouth and the stingy-brim hat with the “PRESS” card didn’t have much formal education but they had street smarts. Today’s J-school grads think they are an elite dispensing their wisdom to the masses but in reality they don’t know much outside their cloistered little world.
There was one other factor that I think made the press in the past more balanced if not necessarily more accurate. While reporters have always leaned to the left, many of the publishers used to be more right-wing. Not all of course (NYT, WaPo) but many of the newspapers in the Midwest and Far West had strongly Republican editorial pages, notably the Chicago Tribune and LA Times. The original generation of publishers were entrepreneurs and self-made men who understood and appreciated the free-market system.
But now these newspapers are run by the heirs, dilletantes who have never had to work a real job in their lives. So they are guilt-ridden liberals and the newspapers’ leftist bias is overwhelming.
Gary Rosen,
“Today’s J-school grads think they are an elite dispensing their wisdom to the masses”
I think you’ve identified the single biggest sin. “Journalists” today (especially the highly paid media journalists) have become members in the elite culture they used to cover and disdain; i.e., they cover their own demographic. Why would we expect criticism of the self from the MSM
Now ther are always exceptions, but I think there is no difference between a journalist w/ a degree from Columbia looking down his/her nose at the blogging media or a John Kerry type with his Harvard degree looking down his nose at everyone.
Gary Rosen,
Not only did the older journalists have street smarts, but they had a sense of purpose (getting THE message out to further one’s own career rather than getting A message out in a way to best further one’s own career).
Foxfier,
So what you’re saying is that today’s journalists think they’re a lot smarter than they really are. I hope that attitude never infects the Supreme Court.
Currently, big corp CEOs know that DC holds the reins. Regulations, taxes, contracts issued or witheld, make the difference. Whatever their personal views, it would seem a CEO has a fiduciarly duty to crawl to and contribute to his masters in DC.
That being the case, the fact that they’re part of the corporate culture doesn’t mean they hang right in running the corp, the corp’s PR, or, in the case of media, the reporting.
T,
The ethic was different in the “old days”. You can’t completely eliminate bias and point of view but the first job used to be to get the facts out, the 5 W’s as you said. Now it is all about the “narrative”. You see this even in stories that don’t have a big ideologic slant. They all start nowadays with some poignant anecdote instead of “Mayor Jones said such-and-such at his news conference yesterday”.
It used to be a joke, “Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story”. Now it is the first principle of today’s “journalism”.
Gary,
Not only have the 5 W’s been thrown out the window, but in the ‘good old days’ most of those people we labeled as journalists actually loved their country (despite her faults) and understood that America was truly exceptional (in all of human history). It ain’t so today. 90% of what passes for journalism these days is a mere propaganda driven agenda to remake America into Western Europe 2.0.
Serg..
BWRs run at 75 atmospheres to better thermal performance. They’re pressure cookers, alright.
—–
I believe the explosion was a steam explosion — not a hydrogen one.
The largest explosions this side of a nova are steam explosions. Krakatoa was destroyed by steam explosions. Sea water poured into the volcanic base — hit the lava — got trapped and then blew cubic miles of rock into the sky. Much more powerful than Tsar Bomba.
Since we no longer use steam locomotives the public has lost its appreciation for the dangers of contained steam.
Even if hydrogen gas managed to get released from the elements it’s still trapped inside the piping.
Super hot hydrogen is INSTANTLY combustible upon contact with air. I cannot for the life of me figure out how any hot hydrogen gas could possibly accumulate in amounts suitable to create a detonation.
By comparison there are any number of spaces that could have trapped water elevated to high temperature and then failure. Ground water comes to mind. The tsunami played hell with the water table. Further it most likely soaked the plant and anything in it.
Again, I’m assuming the operators are not Homer Simpsons.
We’ve been speculating here at home if the ignorance of reporters in groups increases by simple addition or by powers (10 to the 2, 10 to the 3, 10 to the 4 et al). My father suggested that it is by addition until a catalyzing individual joins the pool, like the person at the BBC who said that radiation from a nuclear plant is more dangerous than radiation from an X-ray study or from natural background radiation.
Gary Rosen,
You’ll get no argument from me re: the ethic. As for the anecdotal element. Ever notice how much “man on the street” interviewing is done today, and the type of questions that are asked. Not something like “what happened when. . . ,” but more often than not “how do you feel about . . .?
Right! Like I ‘m really educated by what some passerby who’s probably not educated in (or at least uniformed about) a news event thinks.
Not only are they uninformed, they don’t seem to be taking the time and proper steps to become informed, and are fear-mongering and comparing the reactors in Japan to that in Chernobyl, which had a different design. Could it be that they have an agenda?
Via Pajamas Media, I clicked on the Guardian’s report about a survivor rescued ten miles out at sea.
I searched the page for “nuclear” and got fourteen clickable occurrences (which is not necessarily the same thing as fourteen distinct hyperlinks, but even so…).
Agenda? What agenda?
Let’s go with “more overconfident”…..
T says
I think that modern journalists have many more credentials, but are woefully ignorant of virtually all things that are useful. This is partly because the standards of current university curricula are substantially lower than even 25 years ago. A decent example is Ezra Klein of the Washington Post claiming that the U.S. Constitution was not comprehensible because it was written over 100 years ago!!
To put it plainly, modern journalists do not know squat.
Henry Bowman,
Not only university curricula, but high school as well. I believe (don’t know for a fact) that many early journalists (i.e., 1940s-1950s) were high school grads who learned reporting with on-the-job training. At that time high school curricula were more rigorous than today. Many high schools included Latin study, and grammar and syntax study was of paramount importance. How many reporters today have EVER diagrammed a sentence? I’m convinced that many of todays reporters use adjectives and adverbs in their reporting because they don’t even know what the damned things are.
I guess we’re all agreed that contemporary journalism and jornolists suck (a verb I reserve for extreme use only). So what? Do we all feel better now?
The autoignition temperature for hydrogen is less than 600C.
The temperature required to attack the Zr is above that by quite a margin.
Any vapor/gas release was on command. Hydrogen is self igniting at those temperatures.
So you have deflagration NOT detonation.
The plant operators are on record stating that the explosion was related to water pumping/ steam circulation.
The hydrogen gas forming boogie man is a watermelon project decades old.
Yeah! We do!
Neo, if I may go back to your original article: you write that in the old days, safety standards were more lax.
In one sense this is true, but it is also true that tighter standards could not have helped. We learn from experience, and without years of experience in plant design we could not have met the higher standards.
Every gas released from safety valve immediately cools due adiabatic expansion. It also mixed up with air below detonation treshold. Only after accumulation under roof it can acheive combustable level again. Steam explosion under atmospheric pressure is impossible thing, it is always hydrogen explosion. When water rushes onto hot magma, it evaporates and dissociates forming a hydrogen/oxigen cloud. After ignition it explodes. This was the mechanism of Tunguska meteorite explosion (around 5 kiloton). Pattern of forest flattening shows a volume explosion over area of several dozen square miles.
Administration of Fukushima plant warned about hydrogen accumulation under roof of the reactor #3 yesterday and evacuated personnel. This morning the building exploded, a plume of white smoke rose to 300 m above ground.
That is what Prof. Ron Ballinger from MIT, an expert on nuclear physics, wrote in an article I cited:
“Then, Saturday afternoon, a building at the plant erupted in a massive explosion, apparently the result of hydrogen from the superheated fuel rods interacting with oxygen as plant operators tried to vent increasing pressure inside the reactor.”
Bret, you are partly right about steam explosion in case of Krakatoa, but the steam came not from sea water, but from the Earth interior. It is slightly of-topic, but illustrates the difference between natural tectonic forces and everything we know from everyday practice. The difference is many orders of magnitude. OK, this was certainly bigger than Tzar Bomba, – a million times bigger! Stratospheric eruptions that are commonly referred as volcanic explosions are not explosions at all. They are more akin to what happens when we open a champagne bottle. At hundreds or thousand bar pressures in magmatic chambers, gases and liquids are neither gases nor liquids, they are supercritical fluids – a 4-th aggregate form of matter. As lava ascends along vertical vent to the surface, these fluids lose their supercricitical state and vastly expand in volume, forming bubbles in the molten rock. These bubbles coalesce, and instead gaseous bubbles in a liquid there is a transition to a liquid droplets in a gas flow. After this phase transition the flow accelerates to supersonic speed due far less viscosity, steadily expanding volume and constant pressure gradient. The lava channel at this stage works as supersonic jet chamber, only kilometer size in length and dozen meters wide. The front of this phase transition boundary gradually lowered as magmatic chamber emptied, and at some moment the cross-section of the channel at the boundary level steeply enlarges, since the magmatic chamber usually orders of magnitude wider than the channel. At this moment millions tonnes of supercritacal fluids suddenly evaporate, and the whole mountain is blown up to the stratosphere. The roof of the magmatic chamber collapses, and we get a caldera: a wide crater kilometers in diameter. This can happen at the sea bottom, but can on the land, as caldera at Yellowstone park demonstrates. THe bottom line: you can not hope to tame Mother Nature. It is force major.
Boris Johnson has some words for those who not only think we should tame Mother Nature but also assume we are responsible for angering her. It’s an entertaining read for those who enjoy Question Time debates in Parliament.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/borisjohnson/8379901/Japan-earthquake-Many-are-the-terrors-of-the-earth-but-theyre-not-our-fault.html
Yes, the illusion of control. In all things, it is no more than an illusion. Every now and then, reality flies in the face of our lives to remind us.
“”I think that modern journalists have many more credentials, but are woefully ignorant of virtually all things that are useful.””
Henry Bowman
I think we have clear signs that journalist have been indoctrinated into the ideology of liberalism and any education they recieved came filtered through the prism of that ideology. Which explains why they aren’t thinkers at all but protectors of the faith.
How can you be said to be educated or even a thinker, if whole swaths of possible solutions to societal problems (i.e. abortion and affirmative action) are off limits to discussion due to a relexive offensiveness at their mention as being some form of liberal heresy?
We’re not heading there. We are there and in deep trouble as a country because of it.
One other factor is the “regulatory compliance” trap. In most capital intensive/large industrial facilities (nuclear/thermal power plants, airlines etc.) you have a web of rules that both prohibit and allow actions. Although in a real emergency you may need to do things outside of the rules, your mind is geared to comply with all the regulations first. It takes some time to adapt to a situation where you are outside of regulatory assumptions. What I can glean from TEPCO’s press releases are they they are indeed working “out of the box” but they are also constrained to work with set actions by law. This includes declarations of certain emergency levels dictated by statutes.
When the press was more blue collar (and or served in WWII) they were more comfortable with this type of situation having seen it in action. They focused on the guys at the plant who were in the thick of the action rather than a view of legions of helpless evacuees (who may be quite resourceful and courageous which also not being reported today)
I guess it’s what people need to say when confronted with the elemental forces of nature: illusion of control. Fortunately, very few actually live that way.
Of course, there’s no problem with experiencing awe at something whose magnitude threatens our senses and security. But to conflate that experience, which does not happen very often, with the mundane and quotidian is harmful. And to suggest we have no control is reactionary.
Even if the Japanese have a keen sense of fatality, it’s not the kind that suggests they believe have no control in anything. Just the opposite. Buddhism offers an individual a solution to suffering by the Noble Path or the Middle Way.
In fact, the only people who actually live “the illusion of control” are completely depressed people or mentally ill people, which is a way of saying, I suppose, that if one really believes “in all things, control is only an illusion,” you have a form of mental illness. There’s a connection here: determinism. Remember the argument Clarence Darrow used to defend Leopold and Loeb:
Darrow argued, ” Nature is strong and she is pitiless. She works in mysterious ways, and we are her victims. We have not much to do with it ourselves. Nature takes this job in hand, and we only play our parts.”
What a load.
Since that time, determinism has become accepted amongst an unthinking and uninformed public. No wonder recent reports state half of our society has one form of mental illness or another.
So even though it seems called for and emotions drive one to say things which show sympathy and sadness, it’s a fool reply.
To further illustrate the sheer might of plate tectonic, the whole plate on which Japan sits was shifted to the east by 20 meters in one earthquake.
Curtis: the phrase “the illusion of control” certainly does not mean the same as “the illusion of complete control.”
In order to live our daily lives, we have an illusion of basic control, while at the same time knowing things can happen at any moment even in non-earthquake zones that will blast that illusion away. Nevertheless, the routine of our day to day existence fosters an idea of sameness and permanence that allows most people to function without high anxiety. Constant awareness and attention to our lack of control (and by “lack of control” I also do not mean “lack of any control or way to mediate a situation whatsoever”) would be counterproductive. But a chain of events such as these brings that more into awareness.
I see what you’re saying. I guess I never have understood it that way and was objecting to a literal interpretation. There’s good things, such as humility, that would come from the contextual understanding you provided. What I sniffed was a whiff of determinism and loss of free will. An analogy would be trying to apply the principle of quantum mechanics to everyday life. Obviously, we have no control over how subatomic particles behave nor over the movement of tectonic plates. Another example: Paul Johnson asserted in his “Modern History” that the identification of the theory of relativity with the philosophy of relativity was one of the more unfortunate events of modern history. It was that type of conflation I referred to . . . but obviously not needed here.
Your comment is appreciated.
They’ll be feeling it. After September 11th, I felt like the walls of my sturdy old brick apartment building were literally made of rice paper. It was so clear that there are events that can slice through brick.
That feeling lasted about ten days before the old feeling of safety began to seep back into my mind. (I live just 20 blocks from the Pit.)
Neo, this is an understatement of the same level as these media idiots are wrong. To compare Chernobyl to ANY nuclear reactor in the west demonstrates either one is lying through one’s teeth or demonstrating a level of profound ignorance of EVERY ASPECT of nuclear power such that one’s “opinion” on any aspect of the subject matter is utterly useless. One would get better value from the answers of a 4yo to the same questions.
To quote myself from elsewhere:
Chernobyl had NOTHING – repeat NOTHING — whatsoever to do with Nuclear Power in the West.
The Chernobyl design was about as stupid and foolish and incompetent as possible.
Chernobyl was a water cooled, graphite-moderated nuclear reactor. There has never been a commercial nuclear plant in the West which was both water cooled and graphite moderated. The GM design was the same as the very first “atomic pile” developed by Fermi under the squash courts at the U of C back in the 40s.
The West, back in the 1950s, decided this design was far less safe than the one used in virtually all modern Western reactors, called “Water Moderated“, of virtually two types — “Pressurized Water”(PWR) and “Boiling Water” (BWR), referring to the coolant used. There were a small number of GAS cooled graphite moderated reactors in the UK, of which there were only 13, 2 still in service, and both due to be decommed before the end of 2012.
Now, consider that: Back in the 1950s, with their rather casual attitude towards radiation and safety, they considered this design unsatisfactorily safe.
Why?
Do you know what another name for “graphite” is?
Try “Charcoal”.
Yes, that sounds like a real good idea, doesn’t it? “Let’s surround this really, really hot thing with BBQ Briquettes…”
As far as “Chernobyl was a lot worse than most people realize”, no, sorry, it wasn’t, and that’s the primary reason the anti-nuke Greens don’t harp and whine about it all the time, and you never see “15 years later” or “25 years later” reports in the media.
In true fact, the area around Chernobyl has not really been abandoned, despite the radiation present at distinctly above “normal” levels. The people living there generally are poor and not well off…
Studies of those who have remained there, moved there, or otherwise been exposed to continuing affects of radiation from there show that, in fact, the stress of living there (the fear of the radiation) is more likely to cause/induce cancer than the radiation itself.
There has been (despite the three-eyed fish of Simpson’s fame) no notable increase in mutations.
Not to suggest the events in Japan are a trivial concern, but more than likely there is zero chance of serious long-term problem here.
I confidently predict no substantial man-year loss as a direct result of any long-term issues with any nuclear plant in Japan.
Some years ago, around the time of TMI:
… and to put the existing standards in perspective, another note from the era following TMI:
Standards have gotten tighter, not looser, in the meantime.
Reading http://neoneocon.com/2011/03/13/japan-epicenter-of-disaster/ and I prefer your writing vogue, bookmarkes and can come back when I am not at work