While earthquake, devasting tsunami, and nerve-wracking nuclear meltdown news dominates news lately, two very different and not-frightening shark stories ran in two US papers. These gave me a break, at any rate. :

• Washington Post – Jim Tharpe: Giant sharks swarm in waters off Mexico ; Yes, ones so giant we call them whale sharks. Story is about a strange region of clear water where they throng, gulping fish eggs by the megamouthful.
• Honolulu Star-Advertiser: Studies close in on shark movements ; Tiger sharks, directed walks,  and yo-yo diving.

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- Charlie Petit

Two outlets today nailed issues raised by the behavior of Japan’s government leaders and the utility company whose Fukushima Deiichi power station is suffering multiple losses of control and breached containment, and the behavior of many and perhaps most media in trying to tell the story, warn the public, and stay within the bounds of reason.

And a third writes a look-back on another environmental emergency – an account that may presage what a few wise reporters will be filing about this one a year from now.

First:

Many reporters have already complained bitterly about the opaque and largely content-free official statements in Tokyo from those in charge of emergency operations. Last night I happened to see an angry, frustrated Anderson Cooper telling CNN watchers how hard it is to get even basic information.  Such behavior, coupled with what looks like a tight control over plant workers and their managers that isolates them from reporters, leaves the field open for endless speculation and a striking lack of “story.” Nobody yet has given us an eyewitness account from inside the plant (that I’ve seen) of what the tsunami did when it hit the facility – did its waters flow throughout the complex, overtop all the berms, just some of them, was the plant left with a lake inside the compound? Okay, the diesel backups failed. But how? Could not those generators been on a roof , tall platform, or something else dry? And what were conditions like in the control room? One can understand that officials would keep some things and many details mum until sorted out by careful investigation and debriefings. But to have next to zero information and intimate vignette only worsens public anxiety.

• New York Times – Horoko Tabuchi, Ken Belson, Norimitzu Onishi: Dearth of Candor From Japan’s Leadership ;

Second:

Yesterday, a few posts down, we linked to a remarkably stout defense of Japan’s atomic plants and nuclear energy generally from Lewis Page at The Register, an on line technology outlet in the UK. Another, and particularly well-argued, defense of nuclear power and critique of media tendency to hold nuclear accidents to a higher ethical and safety standard than equally or more  lethal accidents of other sorts has arrived from Australia:

• Cosmos Magazine – Wilson da Silva (editor) : Opinion: Media Meltdown ; Many in media, he writes, are dealing in balderdash. He asks the right questions and makes the right accusations regarding context and consistency. There is nothing, he writes and rightly to these eyes, inherently evil about nuclear power. We’re heard such sentiments before. That doesn’t mean we can stop listening.

I’ve been exchanging emails with an editor at CurrentMedicine.TV, which I singled out for criticisim yesterday for explicitly declaring that Japan’s nuclear emergency is likely to exceed Chernobyl’s threat to the health of the general population. He, or she (the editor offers no name), feels I am missing the point, and am an antique relic of the bygone print press and its assumption of authority and power to boot, to paraphrase. Guilty as charged on the antique part.

And perhaps somehow these several wrecked reactors will catch fire like Chernobyl’s graphite-moderate, flammable, and uncontained PMBR machine and loft a cumulus cloud into the high troposphere and maybe even stratosphere bearing a big fraction of its accumulate actinide waste, bleeding radiation. As it is, a diffuse and likely harmless plume from the stricken Fukushima reactors is due in California any time. Given what little information Japan’s officials are releasing, it’s impossible to rule out almost anything. But I’d bet against Chernobyl redux.

Third :

For perspective, in this week’s New Yorker by staff writer Raffi Katchadourian is a look-back at the BP Oil Spill. It’s not an apology for BP, but it is a defense of many aspects of the company’s effort and a slap at a lot of the media’s coverage. One wonders how, a year from now, Japan’s nuclear meltdowns and the coverage of them will look. And while Katchadourian appears satisfied that by and large the response by BP was professional and competent, he does not address terribly well its failure to cooperate well with reporters.

Further on the BP’s spill’s aftermath and BP’s (and the government’s) hindrance to research:

• The Scientist – Linda Hooper-Bui: Opinion: Gulf science sputters ; In which one learns that it is nearly impossible for this or other researchers to get samples of the oil spewed from the broken well head. BP just says no, and the gov’t says it’s off-limits in the evidence locker.

Other tidbits on the meltdown:

• Nature / The Great Beyond – Declan Butler: Exclusive: Nuclear test ban agency has valuable radiation monitoring data from Japan nuclear accident – but can’t share them ;
• The Atlantic – Clive Crook: More on the Nuclear Fog ; A cry for mercy as media reports pile on the worry, but information and reliable speculation are scarce. Crook, thank you very much, also provides the link for the next bullet..
• MIT Nuclear Science & Engineering Nuclear Information Hub: I work at MIT and had to learn of this from Clive Crook, and am grateful for that. If any of you  reporters covering Japan’s nuclear emergency don’t know about this site, put it on your must-read list now. It explains in great detail a lot of the loose terms and buzzwords in news coverage, and much that does not make the news.

As for breaking news coverage, too much to try to wrap it up, so I’ll stop here on Fukushima Daiichi media performance for today.

- Charlie Petit

The German nuclear power plant Isar I

The earthquake in Japan and the nuclear catastrophe at the Fukushima power plant caused a political aftershock in Germany. It may sound hysterical, that people in Germany are very concerned about the so called Super GAU at Fukushima, more than 8000 kilometres away – some actually started to buy iodine pills and governmental radiation experts got thousands of calls from concerned citizens. But one needs to understand, that Germany has had a very detailed, very emotional public discussion about the “residual risk” (which is not residual at all, anymore) since the explosion at the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Tchernobyl and the radioactive fall-out in parts of Germany. It was a decades long political fight about how safe nuclear technology needs to be. Society concluded that nuclear power technology is neither safe enough nor is it the technology for solving a future of drastic climate change. Only a few years back the government of Gerhard Schroeder (social democrat party) and the green party leader Joschka Fischer negotiated an exit plan for the usage of nuclear power plants in Germany and started to invest heavily into alternative technologies. Even the current conservative party did not take back this plan, though it decided to delay the process just a few months ago. Now, in the face of the catastrophe in Japan, the Merkel government decided to delay the delay. A “moratorium” was announced to reconsider the safety of the remaining nuclear power plants in Germany and whether they need to be switched off immediately.

In consequence, the newspapers are full of news about the Japanese earthquake, tsunami, the nuclear emergency in Fukushima, and the political consequences in Germany. Most science sections try to contribute the scientific background information – not only about the goings on in Fukushima but also about the reactor types in Germany, German and Japanese cooling systems etc.

The Süddeutsche, like many others, wrote about the health consequences of radioactive substances. The Zurich Tages-Anzeiger explained, that it makes no sense for Europeans to swallow iodine pills (and that it may cause harm). A Q&A answered the most important questions. The Financial Times Deutschland decided to provide a “nuclear ABC” (based on dpa). And the Frankfurter Allgemeine had a risk assessment, organized in a Q&A.

The Tagesspiegel (Hartmut Wewetzer) explained in detail, how radiation affects the genome.

An article (Süddeutsche Zeitung) about a satirical twitter campagne against the huge lobby organization of the nuclear power companies (RWE, e.g.) might explain, how much the public is involved, emotionally.

But after a few days, we now see the results of some deeper research, too: Die Zeit had a dossier, stating, that Japan’s nuclear power managers knew about the risk in a severe earthquake (Gero von Randow, Hans Schuh). Also: A historical view about Tchernobyl, health related facts, and information graphics about the nuclear power plants in Germany.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine (Joachim Müller-Jung) presented a report about a 10 year survey, that will be presented in five weeks in Kiev, which concludes, that “Tchernobyl was the worst accident in the history of the civil usage of nuclear power.” In the face of the current development in Japan no one knows, whether this will still be true in five weeks, writes Müller-Jung, before he explains the details of the study about the health consequence of the accident – and about the (probably astonishing, but appeasing?) absence of consequences.

The Tageszeitung (taz) had a special article (Reiner Metzger) about the reactors 4, 5 and 6 at Fukushima. In common risk szenarios, the water filled tanks for old fuel rods were never considered to be a problem. But now it looks like the loss of the water cooling the rods at least caused a fire and probably a meltdown.

The Neue Zürcher Zeitung wrote against the hysteria – about “everyday radiation“. And Hanna Wick makes clear, how different Fukushima is compared to Tchernobyl. “Radiation causes big panicmongering“, cites the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Sascha Karberg

Tohoku Quake rupture (hi def:http://bit.ly/h0hnJt )

Horst Rademacher, longtime Northern California-based science reporter for Frankfurt, Germany’s Algemeine-Zeitung, has a wee advantage over most reporters when it comes to the earthquake in Japan. For one he’s a geophysicist, and for another his wife Frau Dr. Peggy Hellweg is too and she’s on the research staff at the UC Berkeley Seismographic Station. As a couple they are locked deeply into the worlds of volcanology, seismology, geophysics, etc. He is an old pal so I know all that.

His solid account of the rupture process is therefore to be found at the station’s Seismoblog, a public outreach arm, with this Rademacher’s most recent contribution. Any science writer who gets back to writing on the tectonics and geophysics of this temblor does him or herself a favor in reading it. The post links to animations of the rupture. Plus, while he does not break this news, he does provide to most readers for the first time its formal name, the Great Tohoku Earthquake. Some outlets are using it, most that I’ve seen are not.

One thing it does not have but that would have been fascinating: a representation of uplift and subsidence areas, if they’re mapped already, including if possible the vertical movements of the sea floor. I’d not be surprised if that’s a project that’ll take months.

For National Geographic, in the meantime, Richard A. Lovett takes a dive into another field of tectonophysics and geodesy – the quake’s impact on the spin and orientation of the Earth. This topic has gotten considerable coverage in recent days. But Lovett uncovers some wrinkles not in the press release down there in Grist. For instance, it’s not so much that the Earth got knocked off its axis, but that its wobble and  something called its figure axis ad measurably different. More important, Lovett’s piece captures the spirit of scientific discovery and application of such data. It turns out the precise understanding of the parameters just changed by this quake (and by you everytime you go downstairs or upstairs, but less) helps them interpret earthquake waves. Not only that, but rocket scientists need to know the motion of the Earth down to many decimal places if their interplanetary rockets are to exit the planet’s gravitational grip in the optimal direction.

*Update: I have learned that the AP‘s Seth Borenstein broke the news on Earth’s rotation and axial changes before there was even a press release – he’d learned previously that a JPL researcher routinely calculates such things, and called him up. (Hat tip to, um, he himself. Seth also reports that AP’s News Media Guild members have since, for this week, begun withholding their bylines.

Grist for the Mill: NASA JPL Press Release on spin, axis of Earth ;

Charlie Petit

When people aren’t around to bemoan their dead and howl at the moon following natural disasters, one finds a different yard stick to measure such events’ seriousness. Hence naturalists are satisfied that although the ocean rose and swept through much of the broad rookeries for albatross and other seabirds on Midway Island northeast of Hawaii last week after Japan’s huge quake, a small enough percentage of the broods there, and their parents, perished to leave assurance that in a few years things should have recovered.  If only a few percent of Japanese died, that would be an unspeakable horror. That is, one hastens to add, as it must be.

Stories:

• Honolulu Star Advertiser – Gary T. Kubota: Tsunami ravages Midway albatross nests ;
• Pete at Midway – Pete Leary: Midway Tsunami Pictures ; Pete’s a resident blogger, a US Fish and Wildlife man, and he took terrific pictures.
• BBC – Japan tsunami: Thousands of seabirds killed near Hawaii ; Among the survivors: a 60-year-0ld nesting mother Laysan albatross, oldest known wild bird in the U.S.
• Wired News – Brandon Keim: Midway’s Albatrosses Survive the Tsunami ; He puts the perspective in immediately. Many did not survive, but “some might balk at paying attention to birds right now. But compassion isn’t a zero-sum game and Midway Atoll is one of Earth’s natural treasures..” ;

- Charlie Petit

Exposed roof gridworks are sites of hydrogen gas explosions

The colossal, nay epic, struggle by Japan to cope with multiple calamities almost overwhelms the mind. Even great wars do not unfold with such brutal suddenness. It will be months, perhaps years, before a clear accounting emerges of all that has beset that most-advanced nation since last week’s magnitude 9.0 (as it now appears to be judged) earthquake, horrendous oceanic surge that erased entire towns and ports, and nuclear reactors running out of cooling water and out of control amid explosions, fires, and breached containments. And this week freezing, snowy storms blew through a devastated region where many remain homeless, frantically digging through rubble for relatives and loved ones, for anybody.

Ordinarily after such a natural disaster the news would be focussed on the wrecked northeast shoreline of Honshu Island, the nation’s primary land mass, on and the search, rescue, and debris clearing there. Rather, it is on the appalling and still unfolding spectacle of multiple atomic power plants overwhelmed, of mass evacuations, and of warnings that things could go far to the worse.

For all the worry,  it is notable that the source of this trouble, the great earthquake, does not appear to have toppled many buildings of consequence. That’s a tribute to the nation’s vigilance in enforcing building codes. But the tsunami – its power remains stunning.

News is what’s newest. The nuclear drama continues most vividly, yet murkily. It is knocking even the Libya rebellion’s ongoing debacle off front pages worldwide. Almost everywhere, plans for nuclear expansion are on hold:

Sample Stories on Fukushima Taiichi  power station: (Note: a comment from tracker reader Mike Ross suggests the pronunciation is f”KUSH-ee-ma. Not the more commonly-heard on US media foo-koo-SHEE-ma. )

• BBC – Richard Black: Anger over Japan nuclear exodus/ Over the days of the Fukushima crisis, attention has switched from reactor 1 to reactor 3, to 2, back to 3 – and now, to 4 ; A fine cry of frustration from an experienced reporter over the paltry information that Japanese authorities are releasing, and the guesswork that outsiders must employ to sift what little evidence is available.
• LA Times – Thomas H. Maugh II: Japan increases efforts to cool damaged nuclear plants ; Working from LA, Maugh’s effort is an up to date, short, clear summary of immediate actions.
• Reuters – Alister Doyle: Worst case nuclear cloud seen limited to Japan ;
• Wall St. Journal – Andrew Morse, Yuka Hayashi: Tokyo Takes More Control of Power-Plant Strategy ; Distinctly odd development here – the nation’s economics minister personally ordered that a specific nuclear spent fuel pool be drenched with water, and that a vent be put in a nearby structure. So it says here. The economics minister. That’s hands-on economics.
• Christian Science Monitor – Jenna Fisher: Japan’s nuclear crisis DAY 6: A timeline ;
• NYTimes – Hiroko Tabuchi, Keith Bradsher: Japan Says 2d Reactor May Have Ruptured with Radioactive Release ;
• NYTimes: Q&A on the Nuclear Crisis in Japan ; Times staffers answer public queries. Lots of good questions. One question: are reporters the experts to answer such things without first asking somebody else about the issues?  The answers looks sensible. But would not a panel of professors and veteran engineers, medical physicists, etc.,  have been better?

Samples of Int’l Reporting on Nuclear Energy Policy:

• Bloomberg – Jeremy van Loon, Mark Chediak: Reactors in U.S. Quake Zones May Be Key to Future Nuclear Plans ;
• Washington Post – Keith B. Richburg: Japan crisis revived global nuclear debate ; Pro-nuke boosters have always kept their fingers crossed when talking about a nuclear renaissance in the US and many other nations. Japan’s dire strait is the sort of thing they crossed them against. This is a good rundown of reactions.
• Washington Post (Op Ed) Michael A. Levi: 5 myths about nuclear energy ;
• BBC – Jorn Medslien: Will Japanese crisis curb the rise of nuclear power? ; Not curb it, as in park it at the side of the road, but maybe put it in a slower lane for awhile. One thinks, coldly, that much depends on the estimated radiation body count a year from now. So far, it’s small. So far.

- Charlie Petit

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) In Latin America only Mexico, Brazil and Argentina have nuclear power plants. These three countries, and a few others, had plans to build new plants before Fukushima accident. From the local press we can learn the following: Brazilian government is worried. It wants to check the security of its plants, and to reconsider the possibility of building new ones. Mexican leaders express a similar position: they will check the conditions of Laguna Verde, and will wait until further reports to evaluate the construction of new plants. Argentinean engineers say that the location of their plants is totally safe, and the government hasn’t pronounced yet about the repercussions that the catastrophe in Japan will have to its local program. Venezuelan president says he had a project with Russia to build a new nuclear plant, but he irrevocably suspends it. With high seismic risks, Chile presents the most interesting situation: next week Barack Obama will be visiting Chile. One of the points in the agenda involves nuclear energy. The Chilean ministry of energy assures that the agreement they will sign deals only about research, and that to build nuclear power plans is not even considered. But the president Piñera declared that “Chile can’t categorically reject any alternative in energy generation. The new so-called smart technologies are … absolutely earthquake-proof in terms of security. And that’s why we are studying this option”.

Sería prematuro, osado y fútil intentar valorar la cobertura periodística que al minuto están actualizando los medios de comunicación y enviados especiales sobre la catástrofe en la central de Fukushima. Las incertidumbres sobre el estado de los reactores van cambiando y siendo analizadas continuamente por expertos. Algo que quizá podamos destacar de momento, es el rol tan activo que han tenido los expertos en energía nuclear como fuentes de información directa. Para explicar el funcionamiento básico de una central, para entender dónde radican los riesgos, y para valorar diferentes escenarios. Pero más allá de los detalles técnicos, una de las consecuencias del accidente es una valoración global de muchos países a seguir o no con sus planes de aumentar el uso de esta energía.

En América Latina sólo México, Argentina y Brasil tienen plantas nucleares, pero otros países como Chile o Venezuela tienen proyectos para construir nuevas centrales. Veamos las primeras reacciones de sus gobiernos a través de la prensa local.

Venezuela tenía desde 2010 unos planes muy preliminares de construir con la ayuda de Rusia una central nuclear. En El Universal, Alejandra Hernández explica que Chávez ordena suspender el programa nuclear venezolano. Poca valoración de la decisión, pero buena cobertura general de la catástrofe. En otra nota se ve que el presidente venezolano critica los riesgos de la nuclear, a los biocombustibles por estar elaborados “a base de alimentos”, e indica que esto va a darle mucha más importancia y valor al petróleo.

Chile es un caso interesante. Tiene un gran riesgo sísmico, y durante la visita de Barack Obama la semana próxima tenía previsto discutir un pacto nuclear con EEUU. En El Nuevo Herald y con completa información desde Santiago de AP – Federico Quilodran, se explica que Chile no descarta la energía nuclear. Varios medios reproducen la frase del presidente Piñera: “Chile no puede renunciar a priori a ninguna alternativa en generación de energías”, y la defensa de que se pueden construir centrales a prueba de terremotos. La construcción de una central en Chile no está decidida, pero parecía ser una opción con muchas posibilidades. En La Tercera, P. Durán y J.A. Quezada informan que el pacto con EEUU sólo se firmará para cooperación científica, y que el Ministro de Energía asegura que “Chile no tiene ni siquiera un esbozo de plan para construir reactores nucleares”, y que el convenio previsto con EEUU debe ser mantenido. En El Mercurio, Carolina Álvarez hace el seguimiento como enviada espacial a Japón, buena pieza en la sección de ciencia de Sebastián Urbina y Richard García sobre los usos médicos de las aplicaciones nucleares en Chile. Obvia la diferencia entre una central nuclear y los reactores experimentales, el tema del riesgo de seísmos y los planes reales o no de plantear la construcción de reactores nucleares está por aparecer. Curioso que sólo la nota del Herald recoja las opiniones de los grupos ecologistas chilenos.

Argentina tiene 2 centrales funcionando, una en construcción, y otra en proyecto. En La Nación, Laura Rocha sí aborda el debate entre diferentes visiones. Los expertos (término vago a sustituir) aseguran que un accidente como el de Japón no podría ocurrir en las centrales de Atucha o Embalse (zonas de nula o baja sismicidad), pero los ecologistas aprovechan para recordar otros posibles incidentes, mejoras en la gestión de residuos, y que –a diferencia de otros países- Argentina está muy bien posicionada para ampliar su producción de electricidad con energías renovables en lugar de nuevas centrales. No parece haber pronunciamiento del gobierno todavía. Pero en Clarín, la corresponsal desde Brasil Eleonora Gosman asegura que Brasil y Argentina están siguiendo muy de cerca el caso japonés, y anuncia que “El Congreso brasileño ya tomó la decisión de convocar a las principales figuras del sector para establecer si los beneficios de la energía nucleoeléctrica “compensan” los daños eventuales”. En otra nota Daniel Vittar entrevista a una ingeniera nuclear argentina que analiza la repercusión social que tendrá este accidente, y califica de “mal necesario” a la energía nuclear. Discutible calificativo.

Brasil: En Folha, según Breno Costa y Ana Flor la presidenta Rousseff se muestra extremadamente preocupada, y quiere tomar las precauciones que sean necesarias. Los ministros aseguran que no hay motivos de alarma ni preocupación, pero Maria Cabral explica que sí quieren analizar con detenimiento la situación antes de continuar con los planes de construir nuevas centrales nucleares. Mismas conclusiones en O’Globo por  Cristiane Jungblut sobre la necesidad de analizar las centrales brasileñas.

México también tiene dos plantas en funcionamiento y varios proyectos de ampliación. Pero en El Universal leemos de David Aguilar Juárez que México redefinirá su programa nuclear tras el desastre de Japón. Van a esperar los informes de lo ocurrido en Fukushima (tanto por el terremoto como por el sunami) y luego decidir si proceder o no con la construcción de nuevas plantas. Además, revisarán los mecanismos de seguridad de la planta de Laguna Verde que lleva 20 años operando. En otro artículo, Renata Sánchez minimiza los riesgos de Fukushima con las declaraciones de una única fuente. También prepara la interesante pieza “radioactividad por todos lados”. La Jornada profundiza muy bien en la situación específica de México. Laura Poy recoge en boca de “especialistas” la falacia de que las nucleares son la única alternativa viable y de que no tenemos otras opciones para prescindir del petróleo. Angelica Enciso avanza que México tiene previsto construir 10 centrales antes del 2028 como factor clave para la seguridad energética y sustentabilidad del país, y recoge los riesgos de asociaciones ecologistas. Victor Cardoso e Israel Rodríguez también explican hoy que las autoridades se mantienen a la expectativa de los análisis desde Japón.

Seguiremos atentos a más reacciones, y evidentemente, a lo que ocurra en Japón.

- Pere Estupinyà

(*) Update: En la linea de este post, imprescindible el reportaje en El País de Ferran Balsells “El renacer nuclear se apaga“

Nearly all the news about Japan’s Fukushima reactor complex #1 is urgent and worried, verging at times on warning of near-certain radiation calamity on the scale of Chernobyl. For good enough reason. Two and perhaps three units have suffered at least partial meltdown with considerable, although not fully reported, loss of containment. Plant workers have struggled, heroically one gathers and amid great personal risk to prevent a general and significant radiation threat to the wider population.

But a different reaction can be found:

• Register (UK) Lewis Page (Mar 14) : Fukushima is a triumph for nuke power. Build more reactors now!
• (Mar 16): Situation worsens – still no cause for alarm ;

They merit reading. But to summarize, the first says Yay!, these reactors got slugged with conditions far beyond their formal design limits yet shut down as ordered and, while perhaps wrecked, show how resilient and robust such installations are. The second says okay, looks pretty bad, but still and to quote, “human consequences seem certain to remain insignificant against the horrifying backdrop of the earthquake tragedy elsewhere in Japan: and there remains no ground for anyone to fear for their health.”

I think in that last sentence Mr. Page is talking about residents of Japan generally, not the workers in moonsuits and respirators trying, in a hailstorm of beta and gamma radiation, to keep the fuel rods wet most of the time for a few more weeks – allowing short-lived fission-spawned isotopes fade enough to take full meltdowns off the table.

One urgently hopes he is correct, and that the reactors eventually get put to bed, sealed up, and ultimately dismantled without wider and dramatic radiation illness in the general population. But there is another, more solid expectation even if that occurs. One expects that more suspicious reporters will have dug up any number of errors, coverups, and cases of hubris that underlie the manifest failures by the utility and the reactor builders to minimize the reactors’ perils (meaning actual minimization, rather than the pathetic absence of information, beyond bland reassurance, the gov’t and plant operator has provided so far).  Page’s boosterish writing at this stage of the game may leave him looking strikingly naive.

When one reads these stories through, especially the first one, it does appear that Page has a fairly good layman’s grasp how a reactor works and what’s done when it does not work. To resolutely expect the best at this stage of the game is a surprise. But Page is correct on one score: there is little reason to expect the worst, either.

Even-handed Dept: There are other reports with the imprimatur of responsible media that, one must say, go equally far overboard on the panic-mongering side. One example is from an outfit that says it is affiliated with Reuters and draws upon expertise at a long list of US medical centers:

• CurrentMedicine.TV: Comparing radiation leaks from major nuclear events ;

Unsure how broad this outlet’s audience is, but one sentence is striking in its boldness: “..given that there are at least four reactors melting down, it is safe to assume that the Japan disaster will be on par, if not worse, than Chernobyl (which) contaminated areas of Europe thousands of miles away. Some areas were extremely high doses that were in cancer-causing range..” That’s extreme, and somewhat off the cuff. For one thing, “thousands of miles” implies at least 2,000; go that far west of Ukraine you’re in the Atlantic Ocean, that for north in the Arctic, east you’re near China, and that far south in North Africa.

*Amendment a day later: I should have made it clear – the CurrentMedicine article is correct that Chernobyl’s radioactive fallout, while not widely hazardous to health beyond a few hundred miles of the reactor, went thousands of miles. It went global. It was measurable in California, where I live. But it is sloppy writing and editing to say it went thousands of miles and was still in Europe. Hence the article’s construction suggests it was written hastily or off the cuff.

- Charlie Petit

hi def - http://bit.ly/dZLWwq

If you have pets that you love, or if you like cute critters, or if you like theme issues, this issue is for you. The Times’s Science Section still has variety today, but it is dominated by a package of stories on animals – animals as pets, as pests, as food, as laboratory inflictee, and as evolutionary model.

Natalie Angier has a graceful enough opening meditation to polish the theme, but one wonders. Perhaps this package was her idea, but one thinks not. Her power generally is to take a few small, intense examples of something or other, and expand them into a rollicking essay on things one has not been likely to have thought about, or to have seen the way Angier does. This piece is different. It is a stroll through broad groves of metaphors, vignettes, and samplings of how people relate to their pets and other animals. There is empathy, and there is self-absorption.  There is something of the laundry list to it. One thinks, but is just guessing, is that this was written to satisfy an assignment, not as a flight of her own fancy. Again, just guessing.

Others on the theme:

• Carl Zimmer: From Single Cells, a Vast Kingdom Arose ;
• Carol Kaesuk Yoon: No Face, but Plants Like Life Too ; Is vegetarianism just a misplaced elevation of the singularity of animals? Ms. Yoon argues for it. But not very persuasively.
• Benedict Carey: Emotional Power Broker of the Modern Family ;
• Nicholas Wade: Supremacy of a Social Network: Many animals have such networks. But none other has one like ours.
• Sean B. Carroll: For Whom the Cell Mutates: The Origins of Genetic Quirks ; as explained in light of Hemingway Cats. Right. Papa H. was a cat man, and his cats had thumbs.
• Tara Parker-Pope: Forget the Treadmill. Get a Dog ;
• Jane E. Brody: Easing the Way in Therapy With the Aid of an Animal ;

There is more, not all on the animals in our lives. Whole Section ;

- Charlie Petit

Perspective and context is all. So just to put our colloquial worries of runaway reactions and radioactive kerblooies here on Earth into both p and c as spelt out just now, the puzzle over why the whole universe is blasting itself apart (on an astronomically (slow) scale) is in the news. Not that this will be any comfort to the people of Japan. At a few small outlets word is breaking that a top astrophysicist and discoverer of dark energy (hence one of the many perennial favorites for a surely-to-be-shared Nobel who hasn’t yet gotten it), Adam Riess at Johns Hopkins, just narrowed the field for explaining why the cosmos is so eager to shun itself. And he used that old glamour girl, the Hubble Space Telescope, to get the data that say so.

• Baltimore Sun – Frank D. Roylance: Baltimore astrophysicist  uses Hubble to rule out competing theory ;
• Space.com – Clara Moskowitz: Bizarre Dark Energy Theory Gets Boost From New Measurements ;
• iTWire – William Atkins: Dark Energy: What the Hubble Says it Ain’t ;

Grist for the Mill: NASA Goddard Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

LATE ADDITION:

• NYTimes – Tom Zeller Jr. (this just in, late in the a.m. today): Reactor Design in Japan Has Long Been Questioned ;Now the reporting is really getting started. This says the old reactors at the Japanese site have pressure vessels that can’t take much pressure.

• Washington Post – Jia Lynn Yang: Nuclear experts weigh in on GE containment system ; A story along much the same lines as NYT filed this morning. It may even have precipitated the NYT coverage – things are moving fast now.

This morning, frustrated by the low level of hard information in most press about how much radiation, of what kind is lofting from Japan’s stricken Fukushima power plant where fully three reactors are in deep trouble, I finally did the obvious. Check the Japanese press itself. There is something comforting, even in bad times, in diagrams of parts, charts of Sieverts or other radiation exposures, and maps of danger and evacuation zones.

All three, including that one top right, are at one of the nation’s leading newspapers:

• Yomiuri Shimbun: Radiation hazard detected / Massive leak feared after fire at spent nuclear fuel pool ;

It’s hard to picture how a fire is going to burn a pool of water, and even harder to imagine how the casks or even bare rods holding spent fuel in that pool could be consumed and their radio-actinides-fouled wastes lofted into the sky. So what kind of massive leak is conceivable does not come clear in the story. But so much has gone wrong, much worse must now be considered fully plausible, even if not very likely.

Then there is this cartoon here, showing the reactor, pipes, line drawings of a containment, a torus shaped pool where damage is suspected. At least I have something to look at aside from a grainy photo of a hydrogen gas explosion shooting pieces of sheet metal and other stuff from the enveloping, and fragile, outer structure over this reactor vessel high into the sky. But even in Japan, vivid reporting is strangely scarce. Where is the eyewitness interview with a plant foreman and a lot of other workers describing how the quake felt, how big the tsunami was, the heroism or whatever of plant workers dealing with calamity and terror? What were the orders in the control room?  If the utility company has isolated its workers from media, where is the media outrage? Eventually, it all should be out, and will doubtless be absorbing.

So much for Fukushima (and I’m still wondering, is that FukuSHEEma, or FuKOOshima?). Other nuclear stations have their own problems, if not so dire.

Around the world pundits are declaring an end, or at least long fade at last, for nuclear energy. Here’s one example, a vehement and well-argued, if not fact-buttressed, screed denouncing the tendency of people in authority to hedge facts and push limits while obscuring their deeds in platitudes. All that about human venality is true, but as analysis of Japan’s energy needs and the most sensible way to satisfy them, it’s woeful.

• ABC (Australia) Tony Barrell, Rick Tanaka: Nuclear power: when the answer becomes the problem.

What the ABC reaction lacks is any clear argument that the long term and short term casualties of nuclear power are any worse (and, one has to suspect, they are far lower) than the alternatives in coal or oil – and certainly not worse than those caused by many industries. Here’s a proposition: if as many nuclear workers had died over the years from radiation  and other on the job accidents as have commercial fishing boat crew members from drowning and cracked skulls due to deck equipment, just for one example, nuclear power would already be kaput. But nobody is banning fishing on grounds such as that. Some reporters, and science writers are the likely ones to do it, ought to be examining risks to both populations and to individuals in a level way, and put the occasional meltdown and radiation release into unemotional context with the other industrial hazards of modern life. Call me a shill for nuclear power (I am in its favor) if you will, but please don’t imply that radiation deaths are somehow more ethically bad than are those from toxic chemicals, steam burns, suffocations, crushing, floods, fires, traffic pile ups, or other ways to fail to reach old age.

At the same time, it does seem that US reporters should be tearing into the DOE, NRC, White House, and other federal edifices to get better explanations to pass on to the public exactly how, and how much, radiation from Japan might reach the US. Among the first tasks of supercomputers in the national labs decades ago was the modeling of radioactive plume dispersal on the winds – dating to the days of atom bomb tests and real fears of a nuclear exchange. If one or more of Japan’s reactors does disgorge a serious plume of radioactive debris, our officials won’t want to face a public that only then would be told what’s coming our way. My bet is it would be a trivial threat. But to suppress information to protect people from worry is a form of authoritarianism, not to mention arrogance. Information is good for us, even if bitter. Let us have it all. In Grist below is an NRC press release on such hazards. It says next to nothing.

Here’s an inevitably unsystematic sampling of other coverage of the nuclear emergency and its threats to physical and economic health:

• NYTimes – Hiroko Tabuchi, David E. Sanger, Keith Bradsher: Workers Strain to Retake Control After Blast and Fire at Japan Plant ; This is part of a slough of stories from NYT,including William J. Broad, Hiroko Tabuchi In Stricken Fuel-Cooling Pools, a Danger for the Longer Term ; Henry Fountain A Look at the Mechanics of a Partial Meltdown ; And an impressive interactive graphic How a Reactor Shuts Down and What Happens in a Meltdown ;
• NYTimes (update to immed above) Hiroko Tabuchi, David E. Sanger, Keith Bradsher: Japan Faces Potential Nuclear Disaster as Radiation Levels Rise ; “Japan’s nuclear crisis verged toward catastrophe on Tuesday…’ it says here.
• Reuters: Russia says Japan may face meltdown at six reactors ;
• BBC: Radiation falls at Japanese plant ;
• Bloomberg: Reactors in U.S. Quake Zones May Be Key to Nuclear Plans ;
• Voice of America: IAEA: No Indication of Nuclear Reactor Meltdown in Japan ;
• Guardian (UK) Jonathan Watts, Tania Branigan: Japanese nuclear plant hit by fire and third explosion ; “..growing fears that the situation is heading for catastrophe..” ;
• Kyodo News Agency: Spent nuke fuel pool may be boiling, further radiation leak feared ; second fact box story, Status of quake-stricken reactors at Fukushima nuclear power plants ;
• Science News – Alexandra Witze: Japan struggles to control earthquake-damaged nuke plant ; The hed says quake-damaged, but Alex’s story does not separate shaking damage from that of the tsunami. Mostly she explains, in clear terms, how the reactors work and some aspects of what’s gone wrong and a forecast that in a few weeks things should be cool enough to take out the damaged parts and see what’s wrong with them. But on further thought – has any report explained whether the reactor site was flooded entirely, partly, or at all by the sea’s surge?
• New Scientist – Andy Coghlan, Wendy Zuckerman: Radiation around plant falls ; And thanks to New Scientist’s site, one learns of the next bullet down on a trade publication with solid news. Plus, and kudos to New Scientist, it has a roundup by David Shiga on the earthquake’s general disruption of science facilities in Japan
• World Nuclear News: Dramatic escalation in Japan ; This trade pub, with an inside line one presumes to people on the ground, may be one for serious nuclear emergency reporters to bookmark.
• Scientific American – John Matson: What Happens During a Nuclear Meltdown?/ Nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi station in Japan are crtically endnagered but have not reached full meltdown status ;

The info, in short, is chaotic.

Grist for the Mill:

US Nuc. Regulatory Commisison Press Release on US experts sent to Japan, NRC Press Release on potential hazard to US ;

The English language web site for the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan has nothing to say about anything that is important right now.

And DC Science Writer Paul Voosen sent url to this handy guide showing various ways that radiation exposure is measured. He writes: “Could be helpful to my fellow science journos. I’ve already used it, don’t mined sharing”.

- Charlie Petit

Remember when British science writer Simon Singh was fighting in court for his financial life against the nation’s chiropractic association, which accused him of slander for mentioning, rudely and directly, the low-grade evidence on which much of its members practices are justified? And the related anguish in that country that its courts had become a happy, sappy hunting grounds for rich, powerful, or just egotistical “libel tourists”  who sued anybody who said something to make them mad, anywhere?

Simon won that case, finally, even under the existing law. In the US, thanks in part to writer Rachel Ehrenfeld’s defense of her right to write that a rich Saudi funds groups linked to terrorism, enforcement of UK libel findings without much sensible merit in the UK can’t be enforced here either. Now it looks like Signh has helped to change the underlying law over there as well.

• Independent – Oliver Wright, Rob Hastings: Defamation Bill intended to kill off ‘libel tourism’ ;

- Charlie Petit