Last night at a GOProud gathering, our reader Leah faulted the media for dwelling on the problems at the Fukushima nuclear plant and ignoring the plight of the Japanese suffering in the wake of the terrible tsunami. “They’re making it sound,” she said, “like a nuclear bomb is about go off.”
Just a glance at Memeorandum shows several stories on nuclear issues with none on other aspects of the devastation.
And then, as our reader Sonicfrog notes in a post on his blog, when reporting on the risks earthquakes pose to nuclear power plants, reporters ofenttimes don’t have a clue what they’re talking about. A plant manager at Southern California’s San Onofre nuclear power plan was trying to explain to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer . . .
. . . that the San Andreas fault is many miles away [from his plant], and also that they don’t build the reactors to Richter scale standards, but to Peak Ground Acceleration, measured in g’s. If the San Andreas does produce a quake of the same size, because of its distance from the plant, the motion transmitted to the reactors would be less severe than that of the closer fault.
Only the CNN correspondent thought the plant manager was trying to spin him! Sonic, as “ex geology major, specializing in seismology” unpacks things for us:
They don’t build reactors according to a Richter scale metric… Of course they don’t. The Richter scale relates the size and strength of the quake at the epicenter!!!!! That is the point or focus on the ground directly above the hypocenter of the seismic event… where the pressure released within the earths crust, some miles below the surface. The farther away you are from the origin of the event, the epicenter, the less energy will reach you. Throw a rock out into a lake. Where the rock hits the water surface, the wave will be large. If you managed to throw the rock far from shore, by the time the waves you created reach the shore where you’re standing, they will be hardly noticeable. If you are closer, you will get a bigger wave, but it still won’t be as big as it was at the spot where your rock disturbed the water and created the wave in the first place. If you’re half a mile away from an F-5 tornado, you won’t feel as much wind as you would if you were standing right next to the thing! You get the picture. That is why the Richter scale is not relevant when you are talking about shaking… Because it doesn’t consider any energy as it propagates away from the epicenter.
Read the whole thing. Now, I can’t claim to be an expert on things seismological or nuclear, but Sonic knows a lot more than me. And than Wolf. And than a number of people in the MSM. All this gets me wondering: are they hyping the potential for a nuclear disaster of epic proportions while downplaying those providing relief to individuals who experienced just such a disaster?
The sluts and nuts side of the of “journalism” encourages hyperbole and pumping the drama. The story of the Japanese people and their character in this mess is huge. But it is too warm and fuzzy when there are words like “meltdown” on the table. Waving the bloody shirt of Armageddon sells more toothpaste than any amount of feel good reporting.
The greens are out in force squeezing everything they can wring out of this nuclear “holocaust.” Meanwhile, you needn’t concern yourself about the mercury in a house full of twisty florescent light bulbs. And you may ignore the radiation from you TV, microwave and nearby high tension electric lines. But even a slight amount of radiation from a nuclear power plant is going to give you cancer.
I would not diminish the seriousness of the potential dangers in the destroyed nuclear power plants in Japan. But I certainly know better than to believe The New York Times, The WaPo, ABC, NBC, ABC or just about any other “news” source. They do not report accurately, they whore for readership and viewers.
I can safely predict this: exponentially more Japanese were killed by the tsunami than will die or become ill from *any* result of the nuclear disaster.
Media-driven hysteria: The more you scare people, the more they watch, the hire your ratings, the higher the ad rates.
That it advances the anti-nuclear agenda of the left is just bonus.
It’s all about The Narrative. And the fears and prejudices of the pot-smoking hippies who, in their 40s and 50s, went on to take over American journalism.
I have to admit, I did sell my uranium stocks a few days ago. But only because I saw this coming – a new nuclear panic. China is building 40 new plants this year. France, Japan, other countries cannot afford to turn off their nuclear power – there just isn’t enough oil in the world (thank you once again, lefties). A year from now, those stocks will be back up – just as oil stocks are today (from the Gulf disaster last spring). I will try to buy back in when the stocks get to their cheapest.
(continued) I figure, if I can’t stop leftie media propaganda, I can at least make money off it.
Ever consider how many toxic chemicals are used in solar panels?
(Note, that’s a far left hippie source for that info.)
Not that I would want any, but potassium iodide has totally sold out along the US west coast. A localized
mega panic over thyroid cancer from the Japanese
reactor melt down problem. Us ancient ones remember
the radioactive clouds raining crap during the 50s and nuclear weapons testing. Its all relative.
The quizzical part is why conservatives and Republicans are suddenly so bully on nuclear power. We have a nuclear accident in the making second to perhaps Chernobyl, perhaps even beyond that depending on the outcome, and this blog demeans it as “hysteria?” Any reporting I’ve seen of it has been rather somber and technical. It exposes your agenda when you slight the messenger especially when outlets like Fox are hosting guest “experts” about the subject who know little to nothing about the science of nuclear power but rather are political pundits for energy policy.
The dumb liberal’s answer to everything: Bash FoxNews.
The quizzical part is why conservatives and Republicans are suddenly so bully on nuclear power.
“Suddenly”?
Back in 2010, 2009 and 2008, conservatives here were talking about the necessity of nuclear power and bemoaning the fact that short-sighted leftists like Barack Obama had torpedoed it.
Nuclear power is a “duh” choice for anyone. Highly efficient, utilizes a resource of which we have ample supply, and generates the type of power we need when we need it. Our military has over fifty years of experience using it for propulsion, we have some of the best scientists and engineers in its application in the world, and we have made incredible progress in making it safer, even less wasteful than the minimal amount it already was, and so forth.
And, for Global Warming addicts like yourself, it’s carbon-free.
The obsession with Chernobyl is more about liberals projecting another fine example of what nationalized totalitarian socialist government control over utilities, such as what liberals want, produces. Simply because the Obama Party’s dream state the Soviet Union couldn’t run reactors safely doesn’t mean that other powers less ideologically-bound are in the same situation.
I’d love to know how it could possibly be anywhere near that bad, especially since it doesn’t seem to be anywhere near as bad as Three Mile Island. What’s bad is that this is even worse bullshit shoveling by the media than after Katrina.
And I strongly disagree with V. Advancing the anti-nuke agenda is the primary focus. Ratings and ad revenues are the bonus.
Bring on the mighty atom!
Is it true what I’m hearing about profiteers selling KI tablets at exorbitant prices? Here in Australia we can buy a pound of iodised salt in a dispenser for about two dollars at the supermarket.
All hail the mighty pebble reactor!
And again Counterfail is wrong. I’ve been a fan of pebble reactors since I first heard of them.
Heck, you can power vehicles with them. The South Africans had plans for pebble reactor super tankers before aparthide ended.
Here’s irony for ya, we on the supposedly anti-science, anti-progress right really want cheap, abundant clean energy supplied by nuclear energy and support the development of pebble reactors and thorium reactors (which would be even safer and cleaner still).
It’s the Luddite “progressive” Left that digs in and opposes the development of… well… anything really. Because technology scares them, or something. They are all about bike paths and compost heaps, but anything advanced and practical they oppose.
Counterfail needs to read a thoroughly-researched article about so-called “nuclear hysteria,” and here it is:
http://www.anncoulter.com
Now, countdown to Counterfail’s head exploding – 3…2…1…
Regards,
Peter H.
I caught Sean Hannity debating an anti-nuclear lefty from some group called Concerned Citizens for something or other. And the lefty’s two main talking points were: 1. Nuclear is power is no good because it gets subsidies from the Government in the form of loan guarantees. 2. The path to energy independence is for everybody to drive Chevy Volts.
This is why Hannity sucks: When arguing with libs, he just sticks to his talking points instead of attacking the two-pronged stupidity of that liberal’s argument. What he should have attacked was: 1. The Chevy Volt got billions of dollars from the Government in technology development grants, and is still subsidized with a $7,500 tax credit to anyone stupid enough to buy a car everyone from Car and Driver to Consumer Reports says is a POS. 2. Since Mr. Public Advocate also opposed coal power and drilling for oil as well as nuclear power, where the hell would we get the electricity to power those Chevy Volts? Unicorn farts?
And why is it lefties are horrified at the thought of Americans using nuclear power for peaceful purposes, but completely okay with Iran developing nuclear weapons?
Thanks, Peter H. That is a great read you linked.
And where’s the left on engineered crops to actually feed people?
I don’t agree that that the Three Mile Island incident was worse. The TMI incident affected ONE reactor and the containment building was not breached. Fukushima has lost multiple reactors and has exposed spent fuel rods to the outside. So far, the reactor vessels themselves appear to be holding.
That said, the media hype is shameful (favorite line being “nuclear explosion” although I can’t remember who said it… the last nuclear explosion in Japan was in 1945)… and the breathless reporting on Drudge and elsewhere about radiation being detected (how much? what kind? compared to what? they don’t say).
The company I worked for in SoCal manufactured radiation detection equipment and it doesn’t take much to set a detector off (you get hits from bananas, cat litter, smoke detectors, ceramic tiles… urine from people who’ve had radiological treatments).
I know that the nuclear plant is a mess – I want to know how the rest of the country is faring; how are relief efforts proceeding; how are the people doing?
The one thing this situation shows is that nuclear power (at least old plant designs) have one big problem: a major malfunction is not self-limiting – it doesn’t burn itself out and the fuel source can’t just be removed or turned off.
New technology (e.g. the pebble and thorium reactors mentioned above) are exciting.
I’m a Dennis kucinich liberal and I cannot advocate nuclear power enough.. It is not a partisan but rather a scientific question. Of course drudge and fox news and CNN and the rest of the immature media will soak every penny out of the sensational nuclear story. Nuclear plants crumbled to the ground and the damage is much less than most people would imagine. I think the real story is how safe modern plants are even in a worst case scenario. More lives will be lost from the setbacks to the nuclear renaissance than from japans absolutely horrible disaster . Sadly anti nuclear advocates are trying to use this to put us all back to the stone age . This is serious business!
“I’m a Dennis kucinich liberal…”
Do you live in Cleveland? It seems every Kucinich Liberal has to live in NE Ohio, to produce people like him an Trafficant (and such sterling ‘Republicans’ as Sonovavitch).
Ok, more seriously. Pebbles here, pebbles now. I also read (no source available, sorry) about pebble reactors the size of heat pumps to power individual homes. I’d take one of those in a heart beat.
If I ever hit the powerball (I pray to G_d every time they draw the numbers. He replies ‘buy a ticket’.) and get to build Fortress Hermitage, I’ll try to get one 🙂