3 ms·

TEPCO has a long history of cover-ups and falsifications, including the Fukushima plant (see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2321793 http://news.ycombinator

TEPCO has a long history of cover-ups and falsifications, including the Fukushima plant (see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2321793 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2321793 and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2316951 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2316951 from 2002-2003). What's disturbing is that these facts were known to both Japanese and American officials and yet they were completely outside the realm of public discourse [1]: An unnamed official from the International Atomic Energy Agency is quoted in a 2008 cable from the American embassy in Tokyo as saying that a strong earthquake would pose a "serious problem" for Japan's nuclear power stations. The official added that the country's nuclear safety guidelines were dangerously out of date, as they had only been "revised three times in the last 35 years." Another cable sent from Tokyo to Washington in October 2008 alleged that the government had hidden past nuclear accidents. In 2008, Taro Kono -- a senior member of Japan's lower house of parliament -- told U.S. diplomats that the ministry of economy, trade and industry was "covering up nuclear accidents, and obscuring the true costs and problems associated with the nuclear industry." [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2333580 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2333580

InclinedPlane 16y ago
What's also disturbing is that people have been falling all over themselves in attempts to praise the Japanese for their superior awesomeness in everything, yet these records have been easily accessible to anyone who wanted to any serious research. P.S. I love Japan, I think the Japanese are amazing people, and I am enormously sympathetic to them in their hour of need. However, the recent trend of what amounts to cultural fellatio has been disgusting and disturbing.
- georgecmu 16y ago
  A lot of this information is only readily available on websites with a strong environmentalist or anti-nuclear agenda and thus is usually dismissed with comments such as this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2317006 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2317006
  - zoul 16y ago
    That's the problem with most arguments and information in these topics. It seems to me that both sides can come up with information that would require almost a full-time job to reasonably verify. In the end it usually boils down to finding some arguments that fit your subjective point of view…
  - jrockway 16y ago
    I think this is a good comment. If the goal of your organization is to share information, then make that your goal. When the goal is "eliminating all nuclear power from the Universe", then it's hard to take your data seriously, because the reader knows that it's cherry-picked specifically to support their agenda. Bias, even when declared, is bad. An analogy: imagine that there is a really good prosecutor who wins a lot of cases. Great! But what do you think when he says, "my goal is to rid the world of poor people by prosecuting them for capital offenses and ensuring that they are executed". Not as good.
    - lutorm 16y ago
      You could entertain the possibility that the reason they are dedicated to eliminating all nuclear power is because they have seen information like that. You can't know a posteriori, of course, but there are actually people who try to make a judgement upon facts. That doesn't mean there aren't arbitrary judgement calls made as part of that decision, of course. Ultimately you have to judge whether you think more expensive power is a worse outcome than the small risk of making a large area somewhere around a nuclear plant uninhabitable, for example. Those are based on values and can't really be decided by facts. So, another analogy would be: Imagine a journalist who is known for speaking out against nuclear power. Asking him for his reasons, he responds: "I've covered the nuclear industry for my entire life, and I've seen the coverups. Those that calculate the risks of nuclear power don't really know how close we've been to disaster many times, and I've come to the conclusion that we can't trust for-profit companies with managing the small risk of real disaster." Would your opinion of him be strengthened, or would you assume that he made up his mind beforehand and only went looking for facts that supported his belief?

InclinedPlane 16y ago

What's also disturbing is that people have been falling all over themselves in attempts to praise the Japanese for their superior awesomeness in everything, yet these records have been easily accessible to anyone who wanted to any serious research. P.S. I love Japan, I think the Japanese are amazing people, and I am enormously sympathetic to them in their hour of need. However, the recent trend of what amounts to cultural fellatio has been disgusting and disturbing.

georgecmu 16y ago
A lot of this information is only readily available on websites with a strong environmentalist or anti-nuclear agenda and thus is usually dismissed with comments such as this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2317006 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2317006
- zoul 16y ago
  That's the problem with most arguments and information in these topics. It seems to me that both sides can come up with information that would require almost a full-time job to reasonably verify. In the end it usually boils down to finding some arguments that fit your subjective point of view…
- jrockway 16y ago
  I think this is a good comment. If the goal of your organization is to share information, then make that your goal. When the goal is "eliminating all nuclear power from the Universe", then it's hard to take your data seriously, because the reader knows that it's cherry-picked specifically to support their agenda. Bias, even when declared, is bad. An analogy: imagine that there is a really good prosecutor who wins a lot of cases. Great! But what do you think when he says, "my goal is to rid the world of poor people by prosecuting them for capital offenses and ensuring that they are executed". Not as good.
  - lutorm 16y ago
    You could entertain the possibility that the reason they are dedicated to eliminating all nuclear power is because they have seen information like that. You can't know a posteriori, of course, but there are actually people who try to make a judgement upon facts. That doesn't mean there aren't arbitrary judgement calls made as part of that decision, of course. Ultimately you have to judge whether you think more expensive power is a worse outcome than the small risk of making a large area somewhere around a nuclear plant uninhabitable, for example. Those are based on values and can't really be decided by facts. So, another analogy would be: Imagine a journalist who is known for speaking out against nuclear power. Asking him for his reasons, he responds: "I've covered the nuclear industry for my entire life, and I've seen the coverups. Those that calculate the risks of nuclear power don't really know how close we've been to disaster many times, and I've come to the conclusion that we can't trust for-profit companies with managing the small risk of real disaster." Would your opinion of him be strengthened, or would you assume that he made up his mind beforehand and only went looking for facts that supported his belief?