Japan, nuclear power, and the American media meltdown

I’m sickened by the coverage of what’s being termed a nuclear crisis in Japan, but it’s not from worry. It’s from a media and specific journalists that are sensationalizing this story at the expense of science, logic, and the Japanese people.

If you were to read news articles like most people read news articles – a quick glance at a headline and skimming of the first couple paragraphs – you’d be under the impression that Japan was about to become an uninhabitable, permanently irradiated wasteland. However, according to all legitimate scientists in the field and various other outlets, that simply isn’t the case.

That’s not to say there isn’t cause for concern. The situation is not good. However, the mainstream media in the U.S. has contributed to a certain level of unnecessary and unfounded panic surrounding certain developments. There are facts and there are uncertainties, but the two have been lost in the confusion that has resulted from the perpetual feeding frenzy the media has been engaged in since the waves of the tsunami crested.

The latest occurred last night, when news broke that the remaining workers at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant had been evacuated because radiation levels had become too high. As it turns out, it was only while levels spiked, and the workers returned after an hour.

However, unlike the brave 50 who have remained behind to contain the damage despite the risk to their own health and lives, MSNBC (among other outlets) did little to quell the fire. The website is in what I call Crisis Mode: when a huge news story breaks, they modify their regular site design and instead draw further attention a single story by centering one headline at or near the top, blowing up the font size to three to four times its normal size, and changing the case to all capital letters.

Last night, the news organization continued with its coverage by using this method to inform that workers had been evacuated from one of the sites. And yet, buried near the bottom of the nearly 2,000 word news article are these tidbits:

Officials in Tokyo — 150 miles to the south of the plant — said radiation in the capital was 10 times normal by Tuesday evening but there was no threat to human health. The city is home to 13 million people.

…

Officials just south of Fukushima reported up to 100 times the normal levels of radiation Tuesday morning. While those figures are worrying if there is prolonged exposure, they are far from fatal.

Then comes a quote arbitrarily inserted to the point of being apologetic for the tone of the rest of the article:

“These are figures that potentially affect health. There is no mistake about that,” he said.

After inciting fear that the temporary removal of the workers had indicated a complete nuclear collapse was imminent, MSNBC.com suddenly changed its headline, slightly altering its tone:

MSNBC didn’t get the story they wanted, and you can almost see the pouting faces of disappointed fear-mongerers in their addendum from the New York Times. “Oh darn, it’s not as bad as we thought. BUT GUYS IT’S STILL REALLY REALLY BAD.”

Then the site hit paydirt when an off-the-cuff remark from an official not involved in the crisis gave them a new headline:

The “slow-moving nightmare” is a phrase used by a research affiliate at MIT. Without any new developments to report on, MSNBC has once again resulted to covering fear in lieu of facts.

They’re not alone. A recent CNN.com article (among others they’ve posted) employed similar tactics. The tone was of panic and concern, with quotes from political officials in France accusing the Japanese of downplaying the situation and painting various worst-case scenarios. Then, buried at the bottom of the article, was this:

If fuel rods inside the reactors are melting, “the million-dollar question is whether that melting will be contained,” said James Walsh, a CNN contributor and research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s security studies program.

At present, the long-term impact on public health from the crisis appears minimal, Brenner said.

“I think, at this point in time, there’s no real evidence that there are health risks to the general population,” he said.

Compare that to the tone of this article from the BBC:

Both explosions at the plant were preceded by cooling system breakdowns but the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) said neither blast penetrated the thick containment walls shielding the reactor cores.

It said radiation levels outside were still within legal limits.

…

Mr Amano said the crisis was very unlikely to turn into another Chernobyl, the nuclear power plant in Ukraine that blew up in 1986.

This was not buried at the bottom of the article; rather, it was in the first few paragraphs.

As pointed out by Popular Mechanics and other outlets, the worst case scenarios won’t come anywhere near as bad as Chernobyl, despite the constant invoking of the 1986 disaster. The facilities were both constructed at similar times, but unlike Chernobyl the Fukushima plant’s design is and always was inherently safer. The Chernobyl disaster was largely attributable to poor design and shortcuts taken to complete the facility.

And as RPI Professor Yaron Danon recently pointed out to various local outlets (as well as RPI blog The Approach):

“I want to emphasize that an additional safety mechanism – the containment of the reactor even after the explosion of unit one – should still be in tact. So even if there is partial or full meltdown of the core, which might be possible if they lose the cooling, radioactivity will not be released from these sites.”

So we are left with a situation that is bad, but not grim and hopeless.

There are so many unknowns in situations such as these that it’s nearly impossible to know what’s going to come next. It’s not irresponsible for the media to report on the worst case scenarios. However, I think it is irresponsible for them to pedal in speculative fiction and to write the narrative before the facts of the situation are in, as they did last night and have done the last several days.

The people of Japan and the international community have enough real concern in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake, tsunami, and troubles at the plants. To add to it with misleading or borderline fabricated information just seems cruel and unnecessary.

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You can assist in the recovery effort in Japan by visiting the following websites:

• Shelterbox in Japan
• Red Cross
• UNICEF

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