Get A Grip

 

You see that? Fuck all.

To read the gleefully apocalyptic commentary from the MSM on the recent unpleasantness over at the Japanese nuclear sites, you would think that it was the end of days; time to stock up on canned food and shotguns.
I’m pretty sure the Beeb won’t be happy unless someone produces multi-headed babies and Godzilla is awoken.

So I put it to this blog’s long-suffering muse/plagiarisee My Mate Dave, who if you haven't figured by now has a bit of an atomic bent, and with whom I watched the events unfold while thoroughly and irresponsibly obliviated in a bar in Vienna:

“Are the Japs actually boned or should I swim across there and declare myself king of Fukushima?”

And he spoke thus:

“Nah, media get more hysterical the further away from disaster things get.

They're now going on about how "spent fuel pools are exposed to the open air". What, like four at Sellafield have been since the first was finished in 1951? It's a swimming pool. A roof is a good idea, but the water is what makes it work. I'm not claiming this is a good engineering solution (the less said about B30 the better, for any man's sanity), but a disaster-free 60 years suggests they may make the end of the week.

The hmm, explosion or whatever at unit 2 seems to have failed in some respect the pressure suppression pool, which is a big toroidal vessel around bottom of plant. The steam in this thus guffed out and gave that high 400mSv reading (which was measured on the power station site).

The Japanese PM on TV said this is a level which is potentially harmful to health, which it is, but the BBC are now reporting "radiation levels harmful to health" without adding the qualification "if you were actually inside the power station, standing next to the leaking part spewing radioactive gas, when this measurement was taken, and had stayed there, and the radiation level had stayed the same, which it didn't because now it's a thousand times lower".

They're gettin' cooling. Decay is working it's inevitable magic, so the cooling situation improves. They're worried about the spent fuel pools, as they also require cooling (but emit much less power and are less densely arranged), but I'm guessing they may have lost some water due to sloshing in the incident, and well, it's been 5 days nearly. For the guys that managed cooling the reactor for a day job, this is a trivial task. I assume they're trying not to seawater them, but it's an option if a good plan doesn't work.

I reckon this will end with no dose to members of the public above that allowed (which is the situation now, not that you'd guess from watching the news), and the operators ending up with some guys above their annual allowance as well as the guy killed in the actual earthquake. Logically everyone in media and German politics (seriously, what the hell is this shit?) would end up feeling really quite stupid about the fuss they'd made in a couple of weeks time. But they won't.

Get swimming. I did know a good hotel there, but.....”

So be told, hand-ringers.  Nothing to see here, move along.