Yes, I'm engaging into exactly the same armchair engineering I'm lambasting the pundits for. I think I know better. Partially it's my coping mechanism, to break things down into analytical, logical, science/engineering framework.
It's increasingly obvious that the power company is hiding stuff or doing something wrong. It's just not making sense anymore. The details of what is happening at the plant are something where a "coverup" and a chronic lack of communication is absolutely taking place.
Aside from that, though, I have a lot more faith in the government. So far, their statements have been consistent with other sources, they seem to have followed standard emergency procedures triggered by various milestones of reactor malfunction, starting evacuations and such even before the danger was imminent -- or perhaps they knew. They do need to communicate more, but so far I have fairly high confidence in the factuality of their statements.
The good is that as far as the actual impact, municipalities, some of the 500 foreign rescue workers and every embassy in Tokyo is holding up their own Geiger counters, so we'd find out pretty quick (will find out pretty quit) if serious contamination starts to head to populated areas.
If I was a foreigner in Tokyo, I'd probably be on the way somewhere else. If I was a resident... hard to say.
This is indeed all uncharted territory, and it's hard to overstate how bad this is even if few people aside from the plant staff and first responders get severely exposed. FOUR nuclear reactors in a first world country have had catastrophic failures, and despite days of work the failures keep cascading. That's so far out of the "nuclear power is safe" playbook it's hard to comprehend. On that note too, despite the plants being old and having deficiencies in design, I really do want to know how TEPCO managed to blunder this badly. Even after a tsunami and earthquake, you have to work pretty hard at failing to keep your buildings from blowing and spent fuel pools from boiling dry.
A lot of the Japanese express deep mistrust of TEPCO and the government, they're not just as vocal about it. However, once rebuilding begins and investigations get going, I expect this to have pretty far reaching consequences, and not just in Japan.
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It's increasingly obvious that the power company is hiding stuff or doing something wrong. It's just not making sense anymore. The details of what is happening at the plant are something where a "coverup" and a chronic lack of communication is absolutely taking place.
Aside from that, though, I have a lot more faith in the government. So far, their statements have been consistent with other sources, they seem to have followed standard emergency procedures triggered by various milestones of reactor malfunction, starting evacuations and such even before the danger was imminent -- or perhaps they knew. They do need to communicate more, but so far I have fairly high confidence in the factuality of their statements.
The good is that as far as the actual impact, municipalities, some of the 500 foreign rescue workers and every embassy in Tokyo is holding up their own Geiger counters, so we'd find out pretty quick (will find out pretty quit) if serious contamination starts to head to populated areas.
If I was a foreigner in Tokyo, I'd probably be on the way somewhere else. If I was a resident... hard to say.
This is indeed all uncharted territory, and it's hard to overstate how bad this is even if few people aside from the plant staff and first responders get severely exposed. FOUR nuclear reactors in a first world country have had catastrophic failures, and despite days of work the failures keep cascading. That's so far out of the "nuclear power is safe" playbook it's hard to comprehend. On that note too, despite the plants being old and having deficiencies in design, I really do want to know how TEPCO managed to blunder this badly. Even after a tsunami and earthquake, you have to work pretty hard at failing to keep your buildings from blowing and spent fuel pools from boiling dry.
A lot of the Japanese express deep mistrust of TEPCO and the government, they're not just as vocal about it. However, once rebuilding begins and investigations get going, I expect this to have pretty far reaching consequences, and not just in Japan.