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I was shocked at the immediate "this is not a problem" reaction by many people -- particularly here at Hacker News.

by Duff 15y ago

jdp23 15y ago
I was too. Sure, there was plenty of uninformed media coverage jumping to conclusions. As I said at the time, though, the "this is not a problem" camp was equally premature -- and came across as cavalier to the tens of thousands of people in Japan who had to evacuate.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
burgerbrain 15y ago
Just think of it as a natural counterweight to all the people who equate meltdown with a nuclear explosion.
- pohl 15y ago
  Where are such people? From my perspective, you're suggesting a natural counterweight to nobody.
  - tensor 15y ago
    Where are the "this is not a problem" people? I dont' recall a single person claiming the failure at the plant wasn't a problem. As I recall it, there was a "this is not Chernobyl" camp.
    - swaits 15y ago
      There were both. The HN (and "MIT") response was particularly disturbing to me. You couldn't question the official reports of "everything is fine and under control" around here without getting completely slammed, belittled, berated, downvoted, etc. And yet now we know that the total radiation release was probably as much or more than Chernobyl. What I said at the very beginning of this disaster.. If there's one thing everyone should know by now about nuclear reactor emergencies - it's that the authorities never tell the truth in the beginning, through ignorance or otherwise. We have an admittedly small sample of such accidents, but I'm sticking with it.
      - gjm11 15y ago
        > And yet now we know that the total radiation release was probably as much or more than Chernobyl. We do? Evidence, please. For what I think is the conventional view, see e.g. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13050228 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13050228 which indicates more than 10x more radiation release from Chernobyl. That was a couple of months ago; has the situation changed drastically since then? (On 2011-04-12, when the incident was reclassified at IAEA level 7, a TEPCO spokesman made some comment about the Fukushima disaster having released more radiation than the Chernobyl one. I'm pretty sure that was simply not true.) I think the "MIT" response was basically correct and remains so despite scaremongering like that linked to here. The Fukushima plant was hit by an enormous natural disaster; yes, the results were very bad, but they were very much smaller in both human and economic terms than those of the earthquake+tsunami itself and so far the known death toll (due to radiation as opposed to, e.g., things falling on people's heads) from the damage to the nuclear reactors is ... zero. That doesn't mean the damage isn't a problem, it doesn't even mean it's not a disaster. It does, however, mean this: A large, aging nuclear facility was struck by a huge natural disaster, much worse than it was ever designed for (which was, yes, a Bad Thing) -- and the result, so far at least, has not involved death or disease on a large scale. If that's as bad as the downside of nuclear power gets, it's looking pretty good. (What's the downside of the alternative? Well, imagine that the Fukushima reactors hadn't been built and that the energy they provided had come from coal-fired power stations instead. Generating energy from coal costs about 15 deaths per TWh in the US, according to http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-so...; Japan is probably similar. The Fukushima plant produced a bit less than 880 TWh of energy over its lifetime. That's about 13,000 deaths. Even with the disaster, there's no way that the Fukushima plant has caused anything near to that many.)
- marshray 15y ago
  I don't know anyone like that.
  - burgerbrain 15y ago
    I grew up maybe a 10 minute drive from TMI. You wouldn't believe the number of times I heard crap like that. You don't hear it often in discussion venues like this, but try asking people like your mothers friends, or your friends moms... Just about any "layman" of a nonscientific persuasion.
    - foxylad 15y ago
      "I grew up maybe a 10 minute drive from TMI. You wouldn't believe the number of times I heard crap like that"... although with three ears I do hear more than most.
- Duff 15y ago
  Perhaps, but just as ignorant. I would expect a scientist or engineer to react in the absence of good information to say something like: "Is this the worst disaster ever? I don't know, it depends." At least the person assuming that the sky is falling is reacting out of fear. The technical person assuming that all is well is reacting out of hubris.
ahoyhere 15y ago
Denial is a totally natural and incredibly powerful human reaction to uncontrollable tragedy. People who are "more logical than others" are actually no less prone to this than anyone else, they just use a different mechanism to fuel their denial.

I was shocked at the immediate "this is not a problem" reaction by many people -- particularly here at Hacker News.

by Duff 15y ago

I was shocked at the immediate "this is not a problem" reaction by many people -- particularly here at Hacker News.

jdp23 15y ago

I was too. Sure, there was plenty of uninformed media coverage jumping to conclusions. As I said at the time, though, the "this is not a problem" camp was equally premature -- and came across as cavalier to the tens of thousands of people in Japan who had to evacuate.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

burgerbrain 15y ago

Just think of it as a natural counterweight to all the people who equate meltdown with a nuclear explosion.

pohl 15y ago
Where are such people? From my perspective, you're suggesting a natural counterweight to nobody.
- tensor 15y ago
  Where are the "this is not a problem" people? I dont' recall a single person claiming the failure at the plant wasn't a problem. As I recall it, there was a "this is not Chernobyl" camp.
  - swaits 15y ago
    There were both. The HN (and "MIT") response was particularly disturbing to me. You couldn't question the official reports of "everything is fine and under control" around here without getting completely slammed, belittled, berated, downvoted, etc. And yet now we know that the total radiation release was probably as much or more than Chernobyl. What I said at the very beginning of this disaster.. If there's one thing everyone should know by now about nuclear reactor emergencies - it's that the authorities never tell the truth in the beginning, through ignorance or otherwise. We have an admittedly small sample of such accidents, but I'm sticking with it.
    - gjm11 15y ago
      > And yet now we know that the total radiation release was probably as much or more than Chernobyl. We do? Evidence, please. For what I think is the conventional view, see e.g. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13050228 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13050228 which indicates more than 10x more radiation release from Chernobyl. That was a couple of months ago; has the situation changed drastically since then? (On 2011-04-12, when the incident was reclassified at IAEA level 7, a TEPCO spokesman made some comment about the Fukushima disaster having released more radiation than the Chernobyl one. I'm pretty sure that was simply not true.) I think the "MIT" response was basically correct and remains so despite scaremongering like that linked to here. The Fukushima plant was hit by an enormous natural disaster; yes, the results were very bad, but they were very much smaller in both human and economic terms than those of the earthquake+tsunami itself and so far the known death toll (due to radiation as opposed to, e.g., things falling on people's heads) from the damage to the nuclear reactors is ... zero. That doesn't mean the damage isn't a problem, it doesn't even mean it's not a disaster. It does, however, mean this: A large, aging nuclear facility was struck by a huge natural disaster, much worse than it was ever designed for (which was, yes, a Bad Thing) -- and the result, so far at least, has not involved death or disease on a large scale. If that's as bad as the downside of nuclear power gets, it's looking pretty good. (What's the downside of the alternative? Well, imagine that the Fukushima reactors hadn't been built and that the energy they provided had come from coal-fired power stations instead. Generating energy from coal costs about 15 deaths per TWh in the US, according to http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-so...; Japan is probably similar. The Fukushima plant produced a bit less than 880 TWh of energy over its lifetime. That's about 13,000 deaths. Even with the disaster, there's no way that the Fukushima plant has caused anything near to that many.)
marshray 15y ago
I don't know anyone like that.
- burgerbrain 15y ago
  I grew up maybe a 10 minute drive from TMI. You wouldn't believe the number of times I heard crap like that. You don't hear it often in discussion venues like this, but try asking people like your mothers friends, or your friends moms... Just about any "layman" of a nonscientific persuasion.
  - foxylad 15y ago
    "I grew up maybe a 10 minute drive from TMI. You wouldn't believe the number of times I heard crap like that"... although with three ears I do hear more than most.
Duff 15y ago
Perhaps, but just as ignorant. I would expect a scientist or engineer to react in the absence of good information to say something like: "Is this the worst disaster ever? I don't know, it depends." At least the person assuming that the sky is falling is reacting out of fear. The technical person assuming that all is well is reacting out of hubris.

ahoyhere 15y ago

Denial is a totally natural and incredibly powerful human reaction to uncontrollable tragedy. People who are "more logical than others" are actually no less prone to this than anyone else, they just use a different mechanism to fuel their denial.