That means that the reactor cores and spent rods are already completely exposed to the open sky.
Amazingly, nobody in the commercial media seems to have made this connection.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Helicopters.
They're using helicopters to dump water on the cores and spent rods.
And doing so seems to be lowering the radiation levels, at the moment.
That means that the reactor cores and spent rods are already completely exposed to the open sky.
Amazingly, nobody in the commercial media seems to have made this connection.
That means that the reactor cores and spent rods are already completely exposed to the open sky.
Amazingly, nobody in the commercial media seems to have made this connection.
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Your in dire Straits!! Watch the FOX News channel where there were full reports.
ReplyDeleteHAPPY ST. PATRICKS DAY
Good Watch.
Using helicopters equipped with lead shielding isn't a sign that things are going well.
ReplyDeleteFox, as usual, is regurging the Associated Press. Unfortunately it doesn't seem that anyone at AP has a good grasp on this, either. It's symptomatic of the much bigger problem that journalists are expected to be experts in science, politics, law, history and everything else in addition to their native language. CNN at least has Sanjay Gupta for medical things?
ReplyDeleteHappy St Patrick's Day! Erin go Bragh, and bring back the snakes!
The Oil Drum" seems to have good info daily. Wikipedia has a good article.
ReplyDeleteWear a dosimeter if you watch Fox news and limit your exposure to levels that do not harm your mental health!
No reason for journalist to educate themselves on issues if viewers don't demand educated coverage.
Just wrote a long response that Google spit back at me, let me try again. I'll try to be concise this time.
ReplyDeleteHelicopters: The weight of the buckets, water, winches, buckets crews and shielding combined with the radiation is a very bad combination for the helo pilots.
Reporting: Yes, Ken, Faux News sucks. Robert, even when they parrot AP they edit and editorialize it into something incomprehensible.
Radiation: The units SI and mSI (Blogspot won't accept Greek, I'm using little "m" for mu, or micro) strength and weakness is that they do not differentiate between alpha, beta, gamma and neutron. Based on the radiation levels hundreds of kilometers away from the reactors, we are either looking at drifting particulate contamination or direct radiation reduced by the law of inverse squares. Either one is potentially very bad.
Nuclear Cookies: Robert, are you familiar with the "nuclear cookie" puzzle? It might be a good topic for your blog here.
Erin go bragh!
Thanks Ken, just posted the link to The Oil Drum here. Good site, lots of knowledgeable folk over there.
ReplyDeleteCowgirl, actually, yes, I do know the nuclear Cookie puzzle, I learned it when I was on nuke subs. Yes, I'll post that as a St Paddy's Day treat. Or threat? Whatever, it's a good teaching tool.
Good points about the helicopters, hadn't considered that aspect of it.
Regarding Fox News, I don't happen to agree with a lot of their politics, but the fact that they're politically biased doesn't especially bother me, so long as people watching it understand that what they're watching is political commentary and not news. My issue with Fox is that whenever they try to cover science news, they make goulash out of it, no disrespect intended to Hungarian cuisine. From what I've seen of their coverage of the Fukushima reactor accident, they're not doing much worse (or much better) than any of the other commercial news outlets. But between the fact that science isn't really their sport, and the fact that the Japanese government has been rather less than forthright with the information they're giving to the press, an awful lot of critical information is slipping through the cracks.
Unfortunately, Cowgirl, you'd be correct even if you hadn't disclaimered your use of the lower-case m. All of today's reports seem to be in millisieverts, not microsieverts. I wonder how many people have noticed that?
ReplyDeleteMillisieverts. Good eye, sailor man.
ReplyDelete