Messages show conflict within NRC after Japan’s earthquake and tsunami

[bananas]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/messages-show-conflict-within-nrc-after-japan-earthquake-and-tsunami/2012/01/09/gIQA2ll6uQ_print.html

Messages show conflict within NRC after Japan’s earthquake and tsunami

By Steven Mufson , Published: February 6 | Updated: February 7

In the confusion following the earthquake and tsunami that damaged Japan’s Fukushima nuclear complex last March, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it was standing by to help.

But a trove of e-mails posted on the NRC’s Web site shows an agency struggling to figure out how
to respond and how to deal with the American public while cutting through what one official
called “the fog of information” coming out of Japan.

<snip>

The NRC e-mails reveal disagreement about how to advise the Japanese. The NRC staff chafed at
some unorthodox advice coming from an ad hoc group of scientists assembled by Energy
Secretary Steven Chu. Famed physicist Richard Garwin, one of Chu’s group, proposed setting off a
controlled “shaped” explosion to break through the concrete shield around the primary steel
containment structure to allow cooling water to be applied from the outside. One NRC scientist
called the idea “madness.”

Another idea from the Chu group was to attempt a “junk shot” — a variation on what some
engineers proposed to stop the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico — to plug leaks of radioactive water
from Fukushima’s nuclear reactors into the sea. When using a mixture of sawdust, newspapers
and other junk failed, Japan’s Tepco ultimately used a compound known as liquid glass.

<snip>

[xchrom]

1. What a mess. Nt

[wtmusic]

2. Imagine that...debate over the best way to handle a dangerous situation.

What is the world coming to??

[kristopher]

3. The nuclear "industry" tries to make itself synonymous with nuclear "science"

The nuclear industry loves to cloak itself in the legitimacy of the wonderful science being done in the field of physics.

This insight make abundantly clear that we are saddled with an industrial entity that chases profits while embracing lies, not a scientific entity that pursues knowledge while embracing truth.

[Nihil]

4. "saddled with an industrial entity that chases profits while embracing lies"

Rather like the natural gas industry in that respect ... along with Obama's favourite: "clean coal" ...