Is it worse than we think in Japan?
Asked by
josie (
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March 17th, 2011
The US departments of Energy and State are recommending that Americans of any stripe get out of Japan.
On the one hand, this could be your standard suggestion by Big Brother so that there are no recriminations and political demagoguery later.
On the other hand, maybe they know something that we do not.
It is certainly bad enough in Japan right now. But is it worse than we think?
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14 Answers
I looked in my crystal ball and the answer is yes! And no!
Certainly there’s CYA going on, but better safe than sorry. It could be things will get under control in the next day or so when electricity is restored. But there’s no guarantee of that.
No one, it seems to me, has very good information here; not even the Japanese government itself. Probably not even the Tokyo Electric Company. With uncertainty like that, I think the State Department is just being very cautious.
Dude… it’s ALWAYS “worse than we think!”
It is very bad and could very well get worse with the nuclear plant.
I consider the recommendation a “better safe than sorry” kind of thing.
In a crisis like this, the first casualty is always the truth.
I am sure it is MUCH worse than we are told.
The disaster appears to be worse than Three Mile Island, but not as bad as Chernobyl.
That’s very bad, and people are in danger from radiation, but it’s not doomsday, and it doesn’t approach the level of death and suffering caused directly by the quake/tsunami (which apparently killed ~14,000 people).
@Qingu – There is the potential that it can get worse than Chernobyl because of the huge number exposed spent fuel rods in unit 4.
Again, I’m not sure 4 is as bad as you think… or, to put it another way, I’m not sure 1–3 are actually less dangerous than 4.
If the fuel in any reactor melt through their cladding and containment and cause a large explosion, then it could very well be worse than Chernobyl because the area is more heavily populated.
But, (1) Japanese citizens are protected against radioactive iodine, which caused many of the deaths at Chernobyl, (2) It’s not clear the fuel will melt through; they might succeed in cooling it off, and (3) It’s not clear that the melting fuel will cause an explosion, and (4) If there is an explosion, it may well be contained by the concrete and steel containment vessels rather than reaching high up into the atmosphere (Chernobyl had no such containment vessels iirc).
Just read this article about #4.
So 4 has a larger amount of uranium than the other reactors. And the water is lower than expected, which is scary. But, 3 has the really dangerous mix of plutonium, and I believe 2’s containment vessel is in worse shape than 4’s.
The governements of any country want to hide the total truth from the public. I would say that they are not telling it all.
My sister is in Tokyo at this moment and just posted this on Facebook:
as I am sitting in my quiet room in our beautiful hotel in Tokyo, one would never know that catastrophe has stricken a nation, and our world as a whole. Everything seems fine, but you know that it’s not. A mere 150 miles north of Tokyo so many people and towns,villages,families have perished!
Japanese authorities just raised the Fukushima accident from INES Level 4 to 5.
Level 5 indicates “an accident with wider consequences”, according to the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES).
5 was what Three Mile Island was.
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