April 13, 2011

The saga continues


The nuclear crisis is far from over. It was extremely depressing to read yesterday that the rating of the severity of the accident in Fukushima has been raised to 7, the worst on an international scale, to the same level as the Chernobyl accident in 1986.

A report in the New York Times reveals that:

The nearly monthlong delay in acknowledging the extent of these emissions is a fresh example of confused data and analysis from the Japanese, and put the authorities on the defensive about whether they have delayed or blocked the release of information to avoid alarming the public.

They wanted to avoid alarming the public? I mean, doesn't the public have the right to know, the right to have information in a timely manner? The public can decide for themselves whether they will be alarmed or not.

As I was reading an article in Conservation Magazine that discusses BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster last April, the description of what happened (i.e., how BP and the US government did not make public some vital information concerning the disaster) are strikingly similar:

For several weeks
after the Deepwater Horizon rig collapsed last April 18, nobody knew how much oil the busted wellhead was releasing into the Gulf of Mexico—only that the quantity was huge. Without that critical data point, there was no way to gauge the growing size or potential impact of the disaster. Yet the people in charge of stopping the gusher seemed curiously uninterested in knowing the extent of the damage. BP declined to provide any estimate of the volume of oil erupting into the sea, saying it made no difference in their plans to cap the well or clean up the spill, while NOAA offered only a single estimate of 5,000 barrels per day.

The lack of reliable information on an enormous, unfolding disaster made little sense to many scientists and engineers following the news...

... Large-scale disasters almost always overwhelm government agencies. Bureaucracies are accustomed to moving slowly. And when they try to move fast, they hit red tape, turf conflicts, and political obstacles. And large oil companies (or other private organizations) will safeguard their own interests before the public’s... Worse, to minimize political or economic fallout, those linked to a disaster often downplay the severity of the situation or spin it to their own ends.

It depresses me to no end that we seem to be incapable of learning from our mistakes.

Image taken from http://www-ns.iaea.org/tech-areas/emergency/ines.asp