Yeah, I grew up in the middle of the Tennessee Valley, where there's a reactor or hydroelectric plant in every other county, so I'm used to them anyway. And the media's horrible about reporting this stuff, least of all because they don't actually understand it.
There's also the fact that the biggest adversary to nuclear power isn't environmentalism, it's the coal and oil companies. If you notice, every time BP does a commercial about exploring energy options, nuclear power is conspicuously absent. Every time a new plant gets proposed, we get a barrage of advertising about "clean" coal. Even the "cleanest" coal is still dirtier than nuclear, but nuclear is ~scary~ so people don't want to talk about it.
Yeah, the whole "clean" coal thing was awful and it was sad to see how many environmentalists bought into that garbage.
That's true. About the biggest problem with nuclear power is actually where to put the waste - not because the waste is HIGHLY RADIOACTIVE (most of it is stuff that's not even contaminated, but just trashed to be on the safe side), but because there's a lot of it and everyone has a "not in my backyard" mentality about it. They hear "nuclear waste" and imagine Love Canal and leaking drums. The sad part is, those weren't nuclear waste - we're very careful with it - those were hazardous industrial waste from those "safe" coal and oil and chemical companies.
Interesting article - it's definitely nice to get a perspective that's not interested in fear-mongering. I have to say, though, that at times the write-up gets a bit...I don't know, too booster-y? Criticizing the media coverage is totally deserved, but the bit expressing that the likely worst outcome of the reactors' problems will be a "PR disaster for the nuclear industry due to bad reporting" gave me a little bit of pause...
Also, I have no icon entirely appropriate for this comment, so, I've decided to use Zim.
That's actually cynicism that's kind of pervasive in the nuclear community. We have it drilled into us from day one that if we EVER fuck up, it'll be all over the news and we'll be out of a job. And the reporting has been mostly horrible - the best reporting I've seen so far has been on PBS. They actually had a diagram of the reactor and its building and a Columbia University expert explaining everything.
By contrast, Anderson Cooper actually got caught on tape whining that he might not be safe at 100km away from the reactors. He asked the expert that was with him if he was safe and the expert was like "....uh. Yes?"
It's mostly just that when you actually know this stuff and see a bunch of news reports referencing horribly inaccurate movies instead of actual science, it gets under your skin.
See, I can totally understand that. It's just that, *because* people outside the industry tend to be skeptical of it and don't really understand how the whole thing works, the person's writing from a seeming identification with the industry is a bit of a bad idea from a persuasion perspective. I mean, I know you know what you're talking about and that you agree with it. But a random person coming across the article could get a bad impression of the argument from that bit.
On one level, I think it's perfectly understandable, because the person obviously works in the industry and is well-educated about it. After seeing so much misinformation and scare tactics floating around, you do tend to get kind of sarcastic about it all. But on the other, yeah, not the best example of persuasive writing.
I just hope it helps people to be a little better aware of what's actually going on. I know it helped me just because I wasn't aware of how the Japanese reactors were designed and what back-up systems they had in place (the PBS news report filled in the rest of the details, like why the back up diesels stopped working).
Haha yeah! Part of our job is to be able to be knowledgeable enough about this to be able to explain things in the event of an emergency.
And yeah, it mostly is PR and rumors and fearmongering. So many people are completely ignorant of nuclear power and how it works that it's easy to scare them.
Nocturne posted a lot of good links on FLOL for donations, too, for people who aren't comfortable with the Red Cross. I can try to get them tomorrow when I get back from work.
And yeah, the victims of the tsunami need more reporting than the power plants. The plants have trained operators who have the option to inject seawater laced with boron into the core if all else fails, which will shut them down for good. Those aren't as big a concern as the hundreds of thousands of people who've been displaced or are still missing.
I've been kind of absent on my LJ since I got temporarily assigned to the shipyard in Portsmouth. They put me on 12s, so I've not had much time or energy for anything. ^^; I really should post more, though.
Thanks for posting this. A lot of my friends here in Japan are really terrified, and one of the reactors (the building, I should say) caught on fire again this morning. I think until all the reactors are halted people are just going to be on edge.
The most tragic part is the 20-30 km area in Fukushima in which people are advised to stay indoors, because they haven't been able to recover the dead, let alone bury or mourn them.
Yeah, that's pretty awful. Like I said above, the actual tsunami is the worst part of this. The plants pose very little actual health risk to the civilian public. But "nuclear" just sounds scarier than "tsunami" to people.
I hope you guys are doing alright down there. Our shipyards are sending people, but I can't go for personal reasons that'll be shortly obvious. AD wants to go, so he's going to contact our bosses in the morning.
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There's also the fact that the biggest adversary to nuclear power isn't environmentalism, it's the coal and oil companies. If you notice, every time BP does a commercial about exploring energy options, nuclear power is conspicuously absent. Every time a new plant gets proposed, we get a barrage of advertising about "clean" coal. Even the "cleanest" coal is still dirtier than nuclear, but nuclear is ~scary~ so people don't want to talk about it.
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That's true. About the biggest problem with nuclear power is actually where to put the waste - not because the waste is HIGHLY RADIOACTIVE (most of it is stuff that's not even contaminated, but just trashed to be on the safe side), but because there's a lot of it and everyone has a "not in my backyard" mentality about it. They hear "nuclear waste" and imagine Love Canal and leaking drums. The sad part is, those weren't nuclear waste - we're very careful with it - those were hazardous industrial waste from those "safe" coal and oil and chemical companies.
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Also, I have no icon entirely appropriate for this comment, so, I've decided to use Zim.
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By contrast, Anderson Cooper actually got caught on tape whining that he might not be safe at 100km away from the reactors. He asked the expert that was with him if he was safe and the expert was like "....uh. Yes?"
It's mostly just that when you actually know this stuff and see a bunch of news reports referencing horribly inaccurate movies instead of actual science, it gets under your skin.
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On one level, I think it's perfectly understandable, because the person obviously works in the industry and is well-educated about it. After seeing so much misinformation and scare tactics floating around, you do tend to get kind of sarcastic about it all. But on the other, yeah, not the best example of persuasive writing.
I just hope it helps people to be a little better aware of what's actually going on. I know it helped me just because I wasn't aware of how the Japanese reactors were designed and what back-up systems they had in place (the PBS news report filled in the rest of the details, like why the back up diesels stopped working).
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Amazing what effective PR can do.
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And yeah, it mostly is PR and rumors and fearmongering. So many people are completely ignorant of nuclear power and how it works that it's easy to scare them.
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And yeah, the victims of the tsunami need more reporting than the power plants. The plants have trained operators who have the option to inject seawater laced with boron into the core if all else fails, which will shut them down for good. Those aren't as big a concern as the hundreds of thousands of people who've been displaced or are still missing.
I've been kind of absent on my LJ since I got temporarily assigned to the shipyard in Portsmouth. They put me on 12s, so I've not had much time or energy for anything. ^^; I really should post more, though.
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The most tragic part is the 20-30 km area in Fukushima in which people are advised to stay indoors, because they haven't been able to recover the dead, let alone bury or mourn them.
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Yeah, that's pretty awful. Like I said above, the actual tsunami is the worst part of this. The plants pose very little actual health risk to the civilian public. But "nuclear" just sounds scarier than "tsunami" to people.
I hope you guys are doing alright down there. Our shipyards are sending people, but I can't go for personal reasons that'll be shortly obvious. AD wants to go, so he's going to contact our bosses in the morning.
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Things aren't exactly normal, but Tokyo is doing okay, thank you <3
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