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Fukushima: It's much worse than you think

english.aljazeera.net

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Re: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think

#41

Post by jeffreymcmanus »

jdp23 wrote: post #33
Spyro7 wrote: post #7

"In the US, physician Janette Sherman MD and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano published an essay shedding light on a 35 per cent spike in infant mortality in northwest cities that occurred after the Fukushima meltdown, and may well be the result of fallout from the stricken nuclear plant." Somehow, I'm not surprised by this. Janette Sherman is an anti-nuclear activist: http://janettesherman.com/ Joseph Mangano is the di…

Isn't this the kind of argument that Paul Graham charcterizes as "ad hominem" and usually gets voted down on Hacker News? Don't get me wrong, personally I think it's very valid to bring up and important to keep in mind while reading their article. But it seems like a double standard to me.

Paying attention to the credibility of a source is not even in the same universe as an ad hominem attack.

Re: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think

#42

Post by walexander »

jdp23 wrote: post #33
Spyro7 wrote: post #7

"In the US, physician Janette Sherman MD and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano published an essay shedding light on a 35 per cent spike in infant mortality in northwest cities that occurred after the Fukushima meltdown, and may well be the result of fallout from the stricken nuclear plant." Somehow, I'm not surprised by this. Janette Sherman is an anti-nuclear activist: http://janettesherman.com/ Joseph Mangano is the di…

Isn't this the kind of argument that Paul Graham charcterizes as "ad hominem" and usually gets voted down on Hacker News? Don't get me wrong, personally I think it's very valid to bring up and important to keep in mind while reading their article. But it seems like a double standard to me.

Sometimes people tend to throw around logical fallacies a bit too much.

In the legal system it's perfectly acceptable to bring up such an ad hominem argument: motive.

No one should be convicted on motive alone, however it does frame the interpretation of facts in a certain way.

In this particular case we have a seemingly sensationalist article, along with some suspect data collection, and then a large jump from correlation -> causation about nuclear fallout. Once it is seen that the authors have a vested interest in damning nuclear power, it's much easier to draw conclusions about what's going on or to increase scrutiny considering the impartial nature of the researchers.

Re: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think

#43

Post by marshray »

nathanb wrote: post #40
marshray wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAICT the plants reacted to and withstood the earthquakes fairly well. The tsunami on the other hand...well I guess nuke plants and 14 meter high walls of water don't mix.

I believe the main problem wasn't the damage to the plants so much as the loss of power and unreliability of backup power, a known and critical flaw in an earthquake-prone area.

The term "plant" includes all the surrounding equipment. Batteries, backup generators, fuel reserves, etc.

My understanding is that if a functioning subset of generators had survived they could have powered the cooling pumps and the problem would have just been keeping them refueled. You can truck-in or airlift-in fuel quicky, so this would have been a very manageable problem in the short and medium terms, much more so than repairing long spans of downed electrical distribution lines.

Re: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think

#44

Post by tkahn6 »

code_duck wrote: post #22
natural219 wrote: post #6

I love AJE, but I'm regularly surprised over the amount of balls AJE reporters have in making value judgements on the fly. For instance: Why have alarms not been sounded about radiation exposure in the US? Nuclear operator Exelon Corporation has been among Barack Obama's biggest campaign donors, and is one of the largest employers in Illinois where Obama was senator. Exelon has donated more than $269,000 to his polit…

On the flip side, I'm regularly impressed by how the US media almost never questions, mentions or takes note any of the money and power connections which influence US politics so heavily. I think the story is deeper than one company who gave $269,000 however.

The solution is to find higher quality news outlets. NPR and PBS come to mind.

Re: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think

#45

Post by lutorm »

Spyro7 wrote: post #7

"In the US, physician Janette Sherman MD and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano published an essay shedding light on a 35 per cent spike in infant mortality in northwest cities that occurred after the Fukushima meltdown, and may well be the result of fallout from the stricken nuclear plant." Somehow, I'm not surprised by this. Janette Sherman is an anti-nuclear activist: http://janettesherman.com/ Joseph Mangano is the di…

While the idea that Fukushima would be responsible for a 35% increase in infant mortality anywhere in the U.S. strains ones credulity, her being anti-nuclear is not proof of her being wrong.

It's not like MIT nuclear scientists are "disinterested parties", either. Pretty much everyone who's knowledgeable about nuclear power has a stake either way.

There are two competing effects at work here, and it's hard to say which is strongest: If you are biased one way or another, you probably will put more effort into finding facts that support your view. That doesn't mean that those facts are wrong or that you are being disingenuous, just that you have acquired a self-reinforced, biased view of the world. And then you may of course also be selectively reporting those facts known to you, which is more dishonest.

But saying this argument is like pointing out "motive" in a trial seems like a stretch. Motive would usually include financial or other similar types of gain. If saying things you believe are right makes you liable to a charge of having motive to lying just because you have an opinion, then you can't trust anyone except completely ignorant people, which is not a step forward.

Re: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think

#46

Post by srl »

danielharan wrote: post #35
srl wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's too easy, with all this talk about nuclear meltdown and the world's worst industrial disaster (really?), to loose the following nugget of context: Japan just got hit by the fifth largest earthquake since 1900. They have bigger problems - at least in the short term - than radiation. One of the most frequent complaints that comes up is the lack of safety mechanisms built into the reactor. Sure, they could…

By what definition of unreasonable? Would you build a plant that could only handle a 100 year earthquake, but not a 1000 year one? You'd give your children and grandchildren a 1/10 chance of catastrophe... in exchange for what, supposedly cheaper power?

They have a 1/10 chance of catastrophe whether or not I build the plant. A 1000 year earthquake is going to cause much bigger problems then a nuclear meltdown. Would you construct a house that could withstand the sun going nova?

Again, not that the engineers didn't screw up. But the fact that a nuclear power plant got destroyed by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake should come as a surprise to nobody, and should not reflect poorly on nuclear technology in general, any more than the fact that cars crash when driven by drunks should reflect poorly on motors.

Re: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think

#48

Post by tomkarlo »

natural219 wrote: post #6

I love AJE, but I'm regularly surprised over the amount of balls AJE reporters have in making value judgements on the fly. For instance: Why have alarms not been sounded about radiation exposure in the US? Nuclear operator Exelon Corporation has been among Barack Obama's biggest campaign donors, and is one of the largest employers in Illinois where Obama was senator. Exelon has donated more than $269,000 to his polit…

That paragraph would never get past most decent editors. It's one thing to cite those influences if you have actual evidence that Barack Obama is somehow suppressing those alarms. In the absence of that, this portion is total tin-hat crap.

They might as well write: "Did you know that every day drunk drivers kill hundreds of Americans? Did you know that the president drinks?"

Re: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think

#49

Post by dhyasama »

PaulHoule wrote: post #27

There's a lot of nonsense in that article. First of all, they keep repeating the words Plutonium and Uranium (particularly "enriched Uranium") and try to suggest that these are the major threats from the accident. They're not. Uranium isotopes have a half-life of billions of years, so whatever radioactivity they emit is spread out over a very long time. Overall, uranium is toxic in the same way that lead is toxic, an…

That last bit reminds me of a Malcolm Gladwell story. I think it was Korea Air that had a terrible safety record and a consultant was brought in to figure it out. Turns out Korean culture strongly discourages questioning your superiors, even in the face of obvious error. Pilots were making mistakes and co-pilots wouldn't correct them.

Re: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think

#50

Post by nevinera »

No it's not. The long-term environmental impact from fukushima is far smaller than that from the BP oil leak last year. The extra radiation being received by people who live a mile from the site is on par with eating two bananas every day.

The impact isn't nothing; this is a significant catastrophe. But that article is sensational bullshit.

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