More disappointment with Debito

I mentioned he went into meltdown some time ago, and the picture hasn't got prettier since. Some recent rabble-rousing on his blog drew this comment, which I objected to. Or at least tried to, because Debito has been censoring my comments. After AJ and Debito posted explicitly asking me to back up my contention that the previous comment was nonsense (funny how he didn't ask them to show that it was remotely credible) he simply refused to let me post my reply, so here it is:

AJ, I agree that some of the temp workers are poorly treated and probably subject to a significant risk. That's a far cry from the general population being measurably affected. Even if you don't trust the Govt figures, there are lots of people looking for contamination across the country and basically finding very low levels - even when safety thresholds are met or exceeded, these are still set at very conservative levels. I'm happy that people are checking these things, but when I eat a Fukushima peach, the risk of choking on the stone vastly exceeds the risk of radiation-related harm. And don't get me started on mochi, especially in ozoni :-)

Listen guys (and girls), I agree that TEPCO and the Govt are culpable and have been incompetent in various ways. But that doesn't actually mean there is a significant risk to the general population from the situation. To those who say "one cancer is too many", I seriously doubt they make the same (unrealistic) demands of power from coal-fired stations (coal has substantial radioactivity), or their consumption of pickles and salt in their food - there's a good reason why Japanese stomach cancer rates are among the highest in the world (of course, the diet is extremely healthy in other ways, which just goes to show that there are always trade-offs and absolutist positions are rarely reasonable).

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste
http://www.nature.com/bjc/press_releases/p_r_jan04_6601511.html
http://www.live-in-green.com/health_info/problematic_food/carcinogenic/pickled.html

It seems a strange sort of cowardliness to explicitly ask for a response (Debito is the bold writing following on the end of my comment), and then refuse to post it, but there you go. He seems determined to cultivate a clique of tinfoil-hatters, perhaps it's to make himself feel good about his apparent decision to leave Japan, but that is just a guess.


UPDATE: The comment has appeared, after apparently being stuck in the spam trap (see Debito's comment here).


I might have some more to say about Fukushima itself some time, but to be honest there isn't much of importance to report. TPTB have decided that it is now in a "cold shutdown" situation, though the only basis for this announcement seems to be that they said months ago that they would achieve cold shutdown by the end of the year. It is still a mess, mostly contained, but with a growing waste water problem - they are trying to just pour some of the dirty water into the sea, but that is not entirely without objections...

Mutant multi-headed radioactive sunflowers!

Following on this ridiculous story (not to mention the temporary TEPCO worker who died of leukaemia within a few days after starting work at the plant, where he didn't even go near the radioactive bits).

They have been planting a lot of sunflowers up north, perhaps partly because they are tough, bright and quick-growing, but also there has been talk of them soaking up radioactive contamination (which doesn't seem to work so well, but never mind).

Now to my mind, a sunflower has a single big flower head on the top of a stalk. However, the ones up in Tohoku are growing multiple heads! And they were waving and shaking at us if we came too near!

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Nuclear meltdown in Hokkaido

Debito is back on Fukushima again, in full-on hyperventilate mode. "It's time for the naysayers to capitulate".

By which, apparently, he means me, quoting (without attribution) part of a comment I left on his site previously, after he had posted several screeds of anonymous scaremongering.

Of course, after challenging me to admit that I am wrong, he then censors my comments on his blog. Classy.

My position hasn't really changed since this post. Of course, it goes without saying that TEPCO and the JGovt are corrupt and incompetent, and will try their best to cover up the health risks. But that doesn't change the fact that in this case, there really aren't any significant health risks, and no amount of blogorrhea will change that. That's really where the story ends for me. Statistically, I suppose some modest but as-yet-unknown number of people will suffer genuine health effects due to radiation (more will suffer from the evacuation, stress and worry), and obviously this plus the overall effects presumably make it one of the largest industrial accidents ever, but that still leaves the risk way down in the noise for people like me. If I (a) had young children and (b) lived much closer to the centre of attention and (c) expected to stay indefinitely then I might well think it worth a more detailed risk assessment. But as a middle-aged person living well south of Tokyo for a few more years, with a significantly foreign diet to boot, it just isn't worth worrying about. I've got bigger problems, like the newly expanding hornet nest in the neighbouring temple :-)

I don't really object to people who were not capable of rationally assessing the risks and who decided that they would prefer to leave. I do object to them still saying, months later when the reality of the situation is well-known, that the sky is falling and we are all going to die horribly. It may not be a perfect comparison, but it seems that bananas are an order of magnitude more radioactive than the "contaminated" beef that was in the news here recently, for example.

Stoat also has some more interesting posts. It may be worth pointing out that while hundreds of thousands have been evacuated from their homes, and many may never return, in the case of the Fukushima refugees, this is an essentially precautionary and preventative measure, ie it has happened as an alternative to any direct impacts. For those displaced by the tsunami itself, they are the survivors of a catastrophe that killed about 20,000 and destroyed hundreds of kilometres of coastline. There really is no comparison.

Ask them again in August!

There is a faction arguing for re-opening of the nuclear power stations that were shut down after the tsunami. I don't know to what extent safety measures have been improved in the interim, but there is obviously a large cost to the ongoing hiatus.

However, there has also been opposition, at least according to opinion polls. Also some fairly feeble and poorly-attended marches in Tokyo, though being in Japan that is probably about as revolting as the peasants ever get.

However.

Summer has barely started - in fact officially it hasn't started at all, but it clearly has. Following on from the hottest June day ever, we have also had the hottest late June in 50 years, and now we are into the summer power-saving/heatstroke season and air cons are being switched off, and there are various other power-saving measures, including the shutdown of some of our supercomputers at work.

It's all very spirit-of-the-blitz so far but I wonder how long it will last...

Kan he or can't he?

The soap opera of Japanese politics continues to provide mild amusement. The current PM is called Kan (though many people don't know that). A few weeks ago, lots of Important People decided he ought to resign, because, Fukushima. At least, that seems to be the gist of their argument. It's not clear to me how much responsibility he has for the tsunami and nuclear problem, or even if he has dealt with it poorly. The Japanese parliament is split, with Kan's DPJ running the lower house but not having a majority in the upper house. And after decades of LDP rule and the dominance of the long-established bureaucracy (including, but by no means limited to, TEPCO's incompetence and mismanagement), it is hardly credible to think that it could have been turned round in a matter of weeks. But still, Fukushima, so he has to go. Anyway, he's been there a year, so it's someone else's turn.

Rather than meekly stepping down, however, Kan started playing the "time for national unity" card. So a vote of no confidence was arranged. At this point, Kan said that he would resign once the current crisis was over. This persuaded lots of supposed enemies to abstain and the vote failed dismally. At which point Kan said "and of course, this crisis may run and run..." :-) Or words to that effect. The vote having failed, another one cannot be held. So lots of people are wailing impotently that Kan promised to resign in the next week or two, but he's insisting that he will plough on regardless to the end of the summer at least. A week may be a long time in normal politics, but a month is a pretty substantial career here, so the discrepancy is no small beer.

One silver lining: in the interim, the hated Ozawa has actually been suspended from the DPJ as part of a long-running corruption investigation. So if Kan resigns during this interval, it's possible that his influence in the resulting anointment will be moderated.

Unfortunately, in the midst of all the post-Fukushima chaos our lab is trying to renew a major project to run from the end of the current block of funding which ends next March. The national budget and Govt ministries appear to be in complete meltdown and as a result a lot of jobs are at risk. Including ours.

Filling the power vacuum in Japan

I mentioned that there were a couple of hurriedly-arranged sessions on the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami at the EGU. Well, we were basically twiddling our thumbs for the last couple of days before leaving for Vienna - the computers were off due to the power cuts, and our posters had been printed - so we thought we might as well chuck together another poster to take with us for this new session. While most people were naturally focussing on the geophysics, our particular perspective was on the potential for solar power generation - especially if promoted by the Govt - to fill the gap left by the shut-down of Fukushima power plant (and others, though they will probably come back on line sooner or later). Current projections are that the peak summer production will be about 45GW in the TEPCO area, but the usual demand is...60GW. Meaning that the power cuts (which are in abeyance for now) will be back with a vengeance in a a couple of months, and might take place next summer too. So everyone is desperately looking for ways both to cut consumption and to find new resources.

Our poster is here (warning - 5MB). A few quick calculations suggest that a sustained push for installation of solar power could make a significant impact. Firstly, although I didn't actually find a precise statistic for total production capacity, it seems that Japan makes several GW of solar panelling per year (one factory alone makes 1GW). Also, Japan builds a ridiculous number of houses each year - over a million, about the same as the (much larger) USA. So there is a lot of new roof space under construction, and it may be reasonable to expect that build-integrated solar power could probably add about 2.5GW of capacity per year in the TEPCO area.

These capacity figures are all peak rather than average power, and the typical problem with solar (that makes it relatively expensive at least on a capital cost basis) is that it only generates power part of the time. A typical capacity factor is 15%, meaning that a 1kW panel will generate not 24kWh per day but more like 4 - or conversely, you need to build and install 7kW of panelling, and a storage system, to get an average 1kW output. But here's the key insight - the Japanese power demand peaks precisely when the solar power is actually producing, during summer daytime hours. So since the current concern is not the total power production, but rather the summer daytime peak, solar is suddenly a rather attractive solution. In fact the capital cost seems to be not far out of line of other more conventional power supplies, at maybe $5 per W (peak). Right now, it's also a distress purchase - if people want their A/C on during the summer (which I certainly do) then the price may not be a primary factor.

Apparently the Governor of Kanagawa (our prefecture) is pushing for solar power, and the national govt also has a policy goal of 30% by 2030. So it will be interesting to see what, if anything, happens.

Things that make you go...hmmm...

In the current situation, one thing I didn't expect to see is a puff piece for...radiation therapy quackery!

Tamagawa Onsen’s special hokutolite bedrock, with naturally occurring radium, is thought to be particularly effective against cancer.

There are quite a lot of "Radium Onsens" in Japan, in fact we have been to one in particular a few times (Masutomi-no-yu near Kinpu-san). I had assumed that the radiation level was not high these days but according to this link the water there may be about 11,000Bq/l (and a person here says some other onsen are 10x higher) - compare the recent fuss when Tokyo water briefly reached 200 Bq/l. Ok, the bathers aren't generally drinking the onsen water and don't spend very long there, but there are full-time staff and the whole neighbourhood must be (relatively) hot. The radon concentration in the air seems really high too - way in excess of the USA EPA's "action level" of 4pCi/l = 148Bq/m³.

I feel a cunning plan coming on for a profitable redevelopment of the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Those big pools of warm relaxing health-giving cancer-curing radioactive water...

Japan - now with added safety

Well, I grumbled at the Embassy (including by email) when they (inappropriately, IMO) advised against travel to Tokyo and advised residents to "consider leaving", but at least they have updated their advice reasonably promptly:

We are no longer advising against all but essential travel to Tokyo

And though they do not explicitly point it out, the sentence suggesting Tokyo residents "consider leaving the area" has been quietly dropped.

What's the difference between Tokyo and Bahrain?

The answer is...one of them is in a state of martial law with rioting on the streets which is described by the US State Department as having "experienced a breakdown in law and order", and the other has such a severe natto shortage that British citizens are advised to "consider leaving the area".

Compare the current FCO advice for Bahrain and Japan. People are advised to avoid all but essential travel to both of them, but residents are only advised to leave (oops, "consider leaving") one of them. Having acknowledged that there is no significant health risk from Fukushima (for the Tokyo area, remember) and even sneering at the French for their advice to leave which is "not based on science" the FCO still argue that the "potential disruptions" justify this warning, even though life here has now been basically back to normal for some time.

Incidentally, the natto shortage was explained to us today at work. Apparently there's some rumour that it protects against radiation. I'm not sure if that requires it to be eaten, or smeared on the body like sunscreen. I remember a similar run on natto a few years ago when it was supposed to help with dieting. Truly, a magic food.

Talking of magic food, I'm looking forward to a week in Vienna at the EGU meeting next week. We even have an extra day courtesy of Austrian Air who have redirected all their flights via Beijing to avoid the radiation "risk" of Japan and also shifted our flight day. If the "chew well before swallowing" Beijing air is really healthier than that at Narita, I'll eat my schnitzel. Well, I'll eat it anyway. I'm not complaining too much, the flight is annoying longer than it needs to be but we just got the last two tickets for the Philharmonic on Sunday morning.

Whither the "flyjin"?

Lots has been written about the exodus from Tokyo and the surrounding area. Some journalist coined the term "flyjin" for the foreigners who have left (gaijin who run away at the first sign of trouble, geddit?) but since "jin" just means "person", the term should apply equally to the Japanese who have left in rather greater numbers (albeit surely as a smaller proportion). See the discussion here for more on the origins and relevance of the term, and here's a whole blog on the topic. This article talks about the full hotels in Osaka, which is Japan's second business centre and where some companies have shifted (some) operations, and there are also reports of pregnant (Japanese) women fleeing to the west of Japan. There simply aren't enough foreigners here to have caused the reported crowds on the shinkansen and at the airport.

There is no doubt that overall a lot of people have left, and for may of them it was a logical enough decision - for example, consider a family with children, with power cuts, disrupted transport, yoghurt shortages in the shops and Tokyo Disney shut who found themselves facing an unexpectedly extended spring break holiday when the international schools closed a week early. While I reserve the right to gently poke fun at some who have run away rather irrationally, it did actually take a bit of work before I was completely confident that staying was an entirely correct decision, so I don't think vitriolic accusations of "cowardship" and "desertion" (which I've seen no mention of outside the rather febrile ex-pat community) are really appropriate. When you have government and (potentially) relatives overseas pressurising you to leave, it may be hard to stay put. On the other hand, for many people there is no really compelling reason to leave either, as the current (past) disruption is hardly major.

Anyway, what I haven't seen discussed is, what are the leavers going to do now?

If they are actually worried about the current level of contamination (which I've argued is basically negligible) then this is not going to go away any time soon. Plutonium has been found outside the reactor buildings (albeit at near-background levels - see the 28 March, 23:00 UTC update), partial meltdown is now widely accepted to have happened, and there is ongoing leakage of highly radioactive water. This might take quite some time to plug, since all the while they have to keep pumping more water in which is leaking straight out and adding to the contamination, which as well as threatening the local environment must be making life increasingly difficult and dangerous for those trying to actually fix things. Incidentally the much-quoted reading of 1,000mSv/h (I wonder how many know that that is 1Sv/h?) for the water seems to be merely the upper limit of the meters they are using, so it could be an arbitrary factor worse than that (ignoring that these units seem pretty inappropriate for the surface of a body of water). Ultra-low-level (but detectable) food contamination will probably spread substantially further and continue for years. At some level all agriculture is probably contaminated by past bomb tests, of course.

So when, if at all, are the "flyjin" going to come back? In time for the new financial year start on April 1, or the school year which begins the following Monday (for the international schools at least)? When various governments remove their (IMO silly) advice to stay away? Are they planning on waiting for the Fukushima problem to be "fixed", which experts are warning may take months or even years? Or have they simply re-emigrated in a hurry, never to return? I wonder how much thought they have given the subject.

It was recently asked what JAMSTEC's policy was towards staff who had left the area on the advice of their governments or otherwise. No answer has yet been forthcoming. In fact I still don't actually know if any such people exist, though I would expect there to be one or two. There are all sorts of special leave provisions in our rule book and JAMSTEC is generally a generously paternalistic employer (albeit horribly bureaucratic), so I'm sure they will do their best to be flexible. But they can hardly be expected hold jobs open indefinitely, let alone continue to pay salaries, for staff who have no clear commitment to return. And of course we are a govt-funded research lab that doesn't actually have any real products or customers. No-one will care too much if we don't get quite as much research done as we might have hoped (and the computer down-time is a great excuse anyway). For a company whose bottom line depends on actually making and selling stuff, staff desertion may be hard to tolerate. It will be interesting to see what happens when their patience runs out - if it hasn't already.

Slowly leaking

And I don't just mean the power plant itself.

It's been interesting to follow the news management of this ongoing event, and particularly the slow dripping of information coming from TEPCO. I've blogged several times about how I don't think the risk is currently that serious for me, but that shouldn't be interpreted as any sort of approval of how TEPCO have handled things. They are clearly a fairly incompetent and dishonest outfit, with a history of maintenance failures and cover-ups, shielded from any genuine oversight by their cosy relationship with the government and the pusillanimous nature of the local media. There's plenty of evidence of their failures, eg here, here, here. Incidentally, and not at all coincidentally, TEPCO was also at the centre of the recent "amakudari" kerfuffle. I can imagine how the departmental "oversight" goes: "So, what is the current status of your maintenance program, TEPCO technical director?" "Oh, it's fine, Director-General Ishida-san. But enough about that, let's sort out the salary for your non-executive directorship position next year." It is telling that the Govt has basically been completely reliant on TEPCO for all information about the crisis, and it's been reported that PM Kan has basically had to resort to yelling at TEPCO executives to get some information out of them.

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, all the evidence has for some time pointed towards a significant leak from a reactor core. The radiation levels around the plant don't seem to be dropping much if at all - it can't be expect to actually decay much over a few days, but should surely start to disperse if the source is eliminated. There was a brief mention of neutrons being found some way off-site, which I think suggests ongoing and unshielded fission, long after the reactors were supposedly shut down. Remarkably, this news was only released 10 days after the observations were actually made, and it was only at that point that TEPCO said they would start to look for uranium and plutonium! And it is only now, following the unavoidable evidence of the recent radiation burns suffered from workers on site (who weren't even wearing boots despite wading through water!) and heavy contamination of the sea, that the likelihood of a leak is being openly discussed by officials (also here and here).

The accident looks like being upgraded to a level 6, though I don't think this is official yet. There is a de facto increase in the official 20km exclusion zone to 30km, as it seems that no-one will make deliveries in that area and there's not much point in living there when you have to stay indoors all day and the Govt is openly admitting that "the present conditions are projected to continue over a long period of time". Some modelling suggests that infants may have received as much as 100mSv so far, even outside of the 30km advisory zone. It's obviously a horrible disaster for the area.

More transport plumes

Ignacio has been busy generating more analyses of the transport around Fukushima.

The first plot here is the transport from Fukushima based on NCEP winds, I think this was for about one week ago, maybe 17-19 March, and it doesn't look like it includes anything detailed about concentrations, just an idealised calculation showing the direction of travel:

And this second picture is not a west-travelling plume, but rather a back-calculation showing where the air in Tokyo (at 23:00 on 26 March) will have come from, with the colour coding representing age (eg some of the air was near the China coast 24h previously to arriving in Tokyo):


So we can still expect most of whatever is floating around up there around the reactors, to be heading out to sea. On the other hand, obviously some stuff has spread inland. I wonder if the reality may be a little more diffusive than this modelling suggests...

Jaw-droppingly bad media coverage

Fox news had this wonderful graphic last week showing the location of Japanese nuclear power plants:



That "Shibuyaeggman" plant looks rather close to the centre of Tokyo. Let's zoom in a bit:


There it is, just north of Shibuya station. Seems a bit strange to put a nuclear power station in such a densely populated area, where you might be more likely to find a live music club instead. Oh, actually, it is a live music club. They even have a disclaimer up on their website stating that they have no nuclear power plant and are powered by music instead. Maybe they had Blondie headlining recently?

But we expect that from Faux News. Surely CNN can do better?



Not really, no.

Charlie Booker has some more: