In a supercilious attempt to make light of Japan's announcement that the Fukushima-1 nuclear disaster is now at Level 7 along with Chernobyl but still isn't as bad as Chernobyl, we get in Reuters today this little gem…
Q+A: How does Fukishima differ from Chernobyl?
At Chernobyl, the initial explosion resulted in the death of two workers. Twenty-eight of the firemen and emergency clean-up workers died in the first three months after the explosion from acute radiation sickness and one died of cardiac arrest.
Excuse me? At Fukushima, the initial triggering tsunami resulted in the death of two workers, whose bodies were found floating in highly radioactive water flooding a turbine building basement three weeks later. We don't know the fate of the original 50 "sacrificial volunteers" (a.k.a. "Heroes") who stayed with the melting reactors to spray water in the general direction of melting fuel when all the bigwigs and other workers left for safer environs early on. Nor do we know the fate of all those SDF 'volunteers', firemen and day-laborers who have been spraying water in the general direction of melting fuel for 4 weeks now, in addition to the sacrificial 50. More than a handful have been hospitalized for their exposures, that we know of.
Nor has it been three months since the tsunami. In fact, it's only been one month. Knowing the nuclear industry, nuclear utility management types, and nuclear promoters disguised as supposed 'regulators', we will probably never get an accurate count of the dead from Fukushima. Not now, not three months down the road, not three years or three decades down the road. But I'm willing to bet it's more than 28 people, wherever that tally will be kept. If any TEPCO or responsible Japanese government 'officials' die of heart attacks upon learning the truth about this or that new horror, we'll be sure to send flowers and remind their survivors to be glad they didn't have to die ugly, literally retching their guts out as their hair comes out in clumps and their immune system utterly shuts down.
FLOW OF INFORMATION VERSUS COVER UP
Bungling, yes. Disorganized, incoherent and sometimes contradictory, yes. But it is difficult to accuse Japanese officials or TEPCO of intentionally covering up information, with round-the-clock updates and a steady stream of data.
Chernobyl was initially covered up by the secretive Soviet state, which remained silent for two days. But authorities, obliged by huge radiation releases throughout Europe, gradually disclosed details of the accident, showing unprecedented Soviet-era openness.
Huh. I recall that officials at Three Mile Island had round-the-clock updates and a steady stream of hogwash disguised as data too. That somehow didn't make the truth about what was happening any better known and understood, but instead served to confuse the issues hopelessly. Worse, despite having plume maps charted by helicopters monitoring radiation leaving the plant, they evacuated pregnant women and young children to a site smack dab in the center of a primary touchdown area of the plume. Meanwhile, despite getting away with almost all of their lies and obfuscations, Metropolitan-Edison remains the only public utility ever convicted in a CRIMINAL court of violations of the Atomic Energy Act for falsifying leak rates (for months before the accident) [Legal History of Three Mile Island].
No, the Japanese couldn't get away with pretending nothing was happening at Fukushima, any more than the Soviets got away with that pretense when Chernobyl blew. Monitoring radiation levels is standard daily operating procedure at nuclear power plants and facilities all over the world. So, how does this observation make Fukushima different from Chernobyl per both being rated Level 7?
DOES FUKUSHIMA POSE A GREATER RISK IF IT ALL GOES WRONG?
It's not over yet. One month since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, workers still have to inject water into the reactors, creating more contaminated water that is hampering the restoration of power to pumps to cool the reactors and bring them to a cold shutdown.
The situation led a frustrated and demoralized TEPCO spokesman to say that the total fallout could exceed that of Chernobyl. Fukushima involves loss of control at four reactors and potentially more radioactive material, that could continue to seep, leak or burst into the environment.
Officials have said that if power cannot be restored to the cooling pumps, there are other methods, such as air cooling, and that in a worst-case scenario, they could try water entombment in the reactors whose containment structures are sound.
Okay. Fukushima is not like Chernobyl because it hasn't managed to dump its entire load yet. Of course, only a third of the core at Chernobyl melted, and most of that is retained at the site as corium lava in various stages of solidity after 25 years. So Chernobyl wasn't as bad as it could have been either. I do appreciate the honesty of admitting Fukushima's got a whole heckuva a lot more shit to spew than Chernobyl ever had. And that it's got a number of different routes through which it could find its way to the environment and harm people (and other living things).
Moreover, Fukushima isn't like Chernobyl in that 'officials' have several alternative options for the end game. (1) They can get the plants operating again, but that's just somebody's wet dream. They're trashed. (2) They could just walk away and let the radioactive slag heaps do their thing until they're done. That, my friends, is "air cooling" a meltdown. (3) They could bury the whole mess in concrete as a permanent monument to human hubris and stupidity. Of course, that wouldn't stop corium lavas from melting their way into the earth to the water table, or to the ocean…
At which point Chernobyl will weigh in at a couple of factors of ten beneath Fukushima.
Every nuclear-dependent state is now going to have to reassess their commitments to the nuclear cash cow. And political pressure alone isn't going to save France's dream of making its 21st century colonial fortunes off the "Nuclear Renaissance" that ain't gonna happen. That's okay with most people. We could always do what we should have been doing all along - developing and deploying renewables.