Does anybody else think that today's hysterical media coverage of the
ongoing problems at the Fukushima nuclear plant is ridiculous
unscientific scaremongering?
Here are some of today's front page headlines:
'Just 48 hours to avoid 'another Chernobyl'' - The Daily Telegraph
'Britons told to consider leaving Tokyo as nuclear crisis escalates' -
The Guardian
'Japan feels chill as crisis depends: Britons advised to leave Tokyo
while engineers battle to stem radiation leaks' - The Times
'Out of control: Reactors on the brink; Radiation leak spreads; Brits
told: Quit Tokyo' - The Sun
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has encouraged this sense of
impending doom with its current advisory for Japan
(http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/travel-and-living-abroad/travel-advice-by-coun
try/asia-oceania/japan), including:
"We advise against all non essential travel to Tokyo and north eastern
Japan given the damage caused by the 11 March earthquake and resulting
aftershocks and tsunami. Due to the evolving situation at the Fukushima
nuclear facility and potential disruptions to the supply of goods,
transport, communications, power and other infrastructure, British
nationals currently in Tokyo and to the north of Tokyo should consider
leaving the area."
However, elsewhere on the FCO's website is this contrary assessment of
the risks by the UK Government's chief scientific adviser, John
Beddington, including the following
(http://ukinjapan.fco.gov.uk/en/news/?view=News&id=566811882):
"Let me now talk about what would be a reasonable worst case scenario.
If the Japanese fail to keep the reactors cool and fail to keep the
pressure in the containment vessels at an appropriate level, you can get
this, you know, the dramatic word "meltdown". But what does that
actually mean? What a meltdown involves is the basic reactor core
melts, and as it melts, nuclear material will fall through to the floor
of the container. There it will react with concrete and other materials
... that is likely... remember this is the reasonable worst case, we
don't think anything worse is going to happen. In this reasonable worst
case you get an explosion. You get some radioactive material going up
to about 500 metres up into the air. Now, that's really serious, but
it's serious again for the local area. It's not serious for elsewhere
even if you get a combination of that explosion it would only have
nuclear material going in to the air up to about 500 metres. If you
then couple that with the worst possible weather situation i.e.
prevailing weather taking radioactive material in the direction of
Greater Tokyo and you had maybe rainfall which would bring the
radioactive material down do we have a problem? The answer is
unequivocally no. Absolutely no issue. The problems are within 30 km
of the reactor. And to give you a flavour for that, when Chernobyl had
a massive fire at the graphite core, material was going up not just 500
metres but to 30,000 feet. It was lasting not for the odd hour or so
but lasted months, and that was putting nuclear radioactive material up
into the upper atmosphere for a very long period of time. But even in
the case of Chernobyl, the exclusion zone that they had was about 30
kilometres. And in that exclusion zone, outside that, there is no
evidence whatsoever to indicate people had problems from the radiation.
The problems with Chernobyl were people were continuing to drink the
water, continuing to eat vegetables and so on and that was where the
problems came from. That's not going to be the case here. So what I
would really re-emphasise is that this is very problematic for the area
and the immediate vicinity and one has to have concerns for the people
working there. Beyond that 20 or 30 kilometres, it's really not an issue
for health."
Bob Ward
Policy and Communications Director
Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment
London School of Economics and Political Science
Houghton Street
London WC2A 2AE
http://www.lse.ac.uk/grantham
Tel. +44 (0) 20 7106 1236
Mob. +44 (0) 7811 320346
Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic communications disclaimer: http://lse.ac.uk/emailDisclaimer
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