"a huge, uncontrolled, unshielded nuclear reactor. "

"we (all of us) would not be here at all if it weren't for a huge, uncontrolled, unshielded nuclear reactor. Most of us cal it ... "the sun"

Fancy that. I didn't know that. Well, I did, actually, being a physics graduate and all that. I even know what Daisyworld is. I don't know how many journalists know though.

Anyway, questions for the audience: is it a fission or fusion reactor? How far away is it? How well is it understood?

How much harm could it do us, and how? When's the next 1859-scale coronal mass ejection due? How about another solar storm on the scale of the one that took out Quebec Hydro in 1989?

And most importantly: could the energy supply industry make much more use of this radiation than it currently does? Most of us call it... "solar power", I don't care what Lewis calls it.

WTF?

Are there a lot of people working in nuclear-related industries here? It's like a nuclear sales convention.

The current scenario is very different from Page's predictions at the beginning of this problem, which might explain some of the cynicism. That the various operators and regulatory authorities have a long and proven history of lying through their teeth is plainly no reason not to give them the benefit of the doubt this time.

That said this plan, which invokes Dr. Michio Kaku - possibly the media's favorite dancing bear and ice skater of note - Is spectacular. The idea is to drill holes under Fukushima and detonate nuclear weapons under the plant, thus causing it to slide into the sea, allowing as yet imaginary submarines to retrieve the radioactive bits from the sea floor, following the unarguable logic that things are much easier to retrieve from the bottom of the sea with the use of satisfyingly expensive equipment than from dry land using existing technology.

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/05/28/fukushima-how-many-chernobyls-is-it/

What could possibly go wrong? :)

This just keeps getting better and better.

Why no mention of the radioactive cesium contamination?

Shit like this is disingenuous:

"To date no health effects have been reported in any person as a result of radiation exposure from the nuclear accident."

What, we should expect people to develop cancer in a few weeks?

-----

In any event, these are facts which El Reg refuses to lay emphasis on:

* The plant is still not under control

* It has spewed radiation into the air, on the ground, and in the sea

* There are still a host of unknowns as to the degree of contamination

* Everyone near the plant has been evacuated, homes abandoned, businesses shut down

* Agricultural exports from the area have been banned

Instead we hear in El Reg's "reporting" on the issue that the plant not being under control is no big whoop, 'cos the super-fancy steel containment stuff is like, totally fine! And there's a website where you can see just exactly how much teensy-weensy bits of radiation have been released, shoot, less than you would get from a banana shake in Madras! And nothing is unknown except just how incredibly awesomely wonderful nuclear power is, and how extra-believable the IAEA (those known jaundiced critics of the industry) are! And the spinach and green tea from the area are like, totally super-safe, eat some and you can't even taste the difference!

I must hand it to the Register, these horribly biased articles by two staff writers (who clearly are on the payroll of GE as well as El Reg) whose "reporting" has involved nary a single trip to any part of Japan, let alone Fukushima itself, have done a great job of herding the average El Reg reader into the nuclear corner ("well if I oppose it I must be an unwashed ignorant peasant, and heaven knows I am *not* one of those! I read, dammit!"). Well done.

I look forward to your downvotes and acerbic comebacks questioning my IQ, the quality of my DNA ,etc. etc. etc. Meantime Fukushima is still a giant clusterfuck, bad news keeps leaking out in dribs and drabs about how it's actually much worse than a couple of stricken reactors farting rainbows and extra-fortified sunshine.

Just address the cesium issue (the cleanup of the stuff, not your assessment that there's not enough to worry about), would you El Reg? And with a different writer, these two clowns who have been on the case thus far have managed to turn this topic into a war between El Reg and its readership: always a smart business move.

Butt?

Doesn't the IAEA exist to promote and monitor good practice in using nuclear fuel anyway?

(So shouldn't IAEA be more independent?)

While the workers are doing a great job and given that major other events happened before the melt down occurred > hope and pray that a similar event does not happen again any time soon.

how many deaths in Chernobyl ?

well,

So the melt down was contained as designed.

I think not,

the melt down was contained because below the reactor was a big basement

that due to a wave or two had lots of water in it.

an interesting way to design.

no deaths, well how many were caused by chernobyl radiation ? is it up to two now,

Is someone proffering some investor bait here?

"on another note, the greentards throw all the guilt on nuclear power, while they actually should on their own governments for not promoting more safety and better waste management *almost all the radioactive waste could be rendered non-radioactive with a bit of research."

No wonder the USA abandoned the Yucca Mountain waste repository! All we need it just a bit more research....

Some people are more invested in arguing over the Internet than in the reality of Fukushima

"The point is, and always has been, that what ever level of disaster you want to attribute to Fukushima, the tsunami based destruction around it makes it insignificant. It really is that simple."

No, it really is not that simple. Houses can be rebuilt. Roads can be repaved. Power lines put back up, destroyed ships, cars, planes remanufactured.

Salt water can be washed away with fresh water. Ingesting some salt won't give you cancer. As for saying salt has a half-life of billions of years, that doesn't even make any sense. Salt isn't radioactive.

What do you propose to do about radioactive cesium in the ground, in the ocean, and in the water table?

Reminder: there are no safe doses of radiation.

I know your precious little web cartoon with the USRDA of radiation is cute and cuddly and snarkily funny, but it won't do shit for you as protection from getting cancer. Neither will writers of the Register be around to pooh-pooh the cancer diagnoses that are bound to result from the Fukushima accident in coming years (just as they did from Chernobyl).

The reason that radiation dosage guidelines are so incredibly low for nuclear power plant workers is not because a bunch of hysterical hippies somehow conned governments worldwide into over-regulating the poor, put-upon nuclear power industry. The dosage guidelines are low because the safest dose is zero, and the stuff is ridiculously poisonous. In most cases, if you ingest radioactive isotopes, they tend to do things like hang out in your body, become part of your bones, and cause cancer.

http://www.psr.org/news-events/press-releases/psr-concerned-about-reports-increased-radioactivity-food-supply.html

It astounds me that the hacks at El Reg can continue to blather on about how wonderfully fine Fukushima is when the plant is still not under control and the full extent of contamination is still unknown. Yes, unknown. In the purest, non-Rumsfeldian sense of the word.

Paris, because even she has more shame than the paid trolls running amok in the "Science" section of El Reg.

23456

"A fuller report will be delivered at a summit conference in Vienna ..."

And guess which country has NO nuclear power ... why, it's Austria of course!

And what is the capital city of Austria? ... why, it's Vienna of course!

And where is the IAEA based? ... why, it's Vienna of course!

It seems to have escaped the notice of some

that roughly 25% of us are going to die from cancer of some kind after our alloted spans. Only 56 years ago, two nuclear devices* were detonated over cities which were quickly re-built and stand today vibrantly populated. The near-paranoid fear-of-nuclear meme is a hangover from Cold War days when production of bomb-grade materials was a primary function of nuclear installations and privacy was very important. All viable alternatives deserve research and encouragement but nuclear can carry the baseload into a future not predicated on just burning shit till we croak. Or we get croaked. Did everyone notice the quick shell-game change of units from Sieverts ( so milli and micro ) to the much-more-scarily-numerous Becquerels as the panic/coverage proceeded ? One must ask whose interests are being affected here and who's in bed with whom ? Media and CarbonFuels ? The IEAE may be an industrial association, Lewis a propagandist and I a for-real bunny but ElReg's coverage of Fukushima, warts and all, has been a beacon of sanity in a world of MediaGoneMad®. I am ful of grate.

Lewis keeps us up to date on all the latest mission-accomplishing black-gold liberating casualty-free collateral-damage-limiting Weapons of Mass Destruction too. Study these for the reel Feer.

* and a whole bunch more elsewhere before and since.

icon - vandalism and a waste of fuel

Bananas and salt and Chernobyl

Bananas: potassium is not radioactive. It has a radioactive isotope that exists in miniscule quantities.

Salt: you can ingest salt and you won't die. In fact, the body needs salt.

Chernobyl: bizarre mutations in the "teeming" animal and plant life in the exclusion zone have been and continue to be observed, including albino birds and trees that don't know which way is up when they grow.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/04/0426_060426_chernobyl.html

Radioactive cesium is a bitch. It's all over the place around Fukushima, and the health effects will be long-term because the half-life is long-term. It doesn't "dissipate", it concentrates within the food chain, just like mercury in fish. No one has yet addressed what will be done to clean up the radioactive isotopes spewed all over the immediate area of Fukushima, particularly the longer-lived isotopes, for which there is NO SAFE DOSE to ingest into your body. If you eat radioactive cesium, you are fucked. The only question is how much, and how soon. Hopefully it is only a little and not for a long time yet. But no one knows and the reactor complex is still. Not. Under. Control.

Essentially all that the Reg articles have said on the Fukushima boils down to these points:

1) Well at least most of the fuel seems to have been contained!

2) The tsunami destroyed entire towns! Why are you whining about a little radiation?

3) Chernobyl was a bunch of shit. We could all go live there right now and nobody would grow a third arm tomorrow.

4) Hey, background radiation exists everywhere! Bananas, airplanes, and Madras! So STFU hippies!

5) People die in mines and fall off windmills. Chemical contamination and accidents with non-nuclear power have killed more people than nuclear power. So again, STFU hippies!

None of this addresses the central problem with Fukushima and with nuclear power in general: so far (so far!) humanity has only dodged the bullet when it comes to nuclear catastrophe. There have been some serious messes and some serious health consequences, but so far the nightmare scenarios of toxic nuclear plumes blowing all over the world and causing instant sickness and death have been avoided. But dodging the bullet doesn't mean getting shot at is safe. Nuclear power is extremely risky, extremely dangerous, and it creates extremely toxic waste for which there is no cleanup; the only solution is to dig a deep, secure hole and hope nobody digs it back up (or it leaks out) for thousands of years.

The Fukushima incident was not vastly worse because we are so great at designing and maintaining nuclear power plants. It was only by sheer luck or the grace of God or whatever you like to call it that the the disaster did not turn out infinitely worse.

As it is, radioactive cesium and other isotopes are out there in the food chain and there is still no answer from anyone as to how this will be cleaned up. All the sheep can do is bleat about bananas and flight attendants and Madras. I don't see anyone flying over to Fukushima to eat the spinach or drink the green tea, though. Least of all brave Messrs. Page and Orlowski, and certainly not on their own dime. (Will the Register foot the bill to back up their trolling, I wonder?)

Japan doubles the estimate (estimate!) of radiation released at Fukushima

For those of you keeping score at home via banana consumption, you'll need to head back to the local grocer to double your intake.

-----

http://www.tokyotimes.jp/post/en/1939/Government+doubles+estimate+on+radiation+leaked+at+Fukushima.html

Or check your favorite news outlet.

The news is not going to get better about this mess; it is going to come out in dribs and drabs about how extra-fucked-up it actually was and is. Cleanup will not be trivial and I don't believe the exclusion zone is a bunch of bureaucratic BS; it is there for a good reason.

OK, so I guess it kind of *is* a meltdown. Three, actually...

"Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant experienced full meltdowns at three reactors in the wake of an earthquake and tsunami in March, the country's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters said Monday."

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/06/06/japan.nuclear.meltdown/index.html

Oh well.

Errr I don't follow the seawater argument. So bizarre one is not sure how to reply.

Salt is not a poison. Salt is necessary for life. You can ingest salt and you won't die.

Radioactive cesium is a poison. It is not necessary for life. If you ingest it, it builds up in your bones and muscle tissue and your body takes a while to flush it out; long enough that cancer is a real risk. Radioactive strontium is even worse. The body treats it like calcium and it does not flush out of your system entirely; it accumulates in the bones.

How in hell does saying that drinking too much seawater will make humans sick somehow imply that ingesting radioactive isotopes is safe? There is no safe dose for ingesting these things. There is a safe (there is even a necessary) dose of salt, on the other hand.

As for seawater, lots of good tasty stuff grows in it. Fish, for example. Seaweed. Shrimp. Whales, even, if you are so inclined. Hand me an oyster dripping with brackish salty water and I'll scarf it right down. Hand me an oyster grown in water contaminated with radioactive cesium and strontium and I will decline.

Paris, because even she knows that not everything salty is bad for you.

those unable to use logic fall foul of nuclear hysteria

If you're the sort of person who considers salt to be 'safe' because it is necessary for life, then quite clearly you don't have the reasoning skills to engage usefully with a debate about nuclear safety.

The truth about salt is that is a killer. Not only will you die rather quickly if you have large amounts of it (e.g. drink seawater), but you'll also suffer from all sorts of chronic conditions which shorten life if your diet contains slightly raised levels of the stuff.

Now in the same way, nuclear material can either be harmless or dangerous depending on the type and severity of exposure, and the type of radioactive element involved.

But you're already on record as making the declaration that there is no safe level of radiation - something totally disproven by the evidence - something you are quite clearly unable to deal with.

It is precisely because you are unable to reason that you find yourself making no headway in the debate.

If you want to influence others, I suggest you stop hiding from the facts which disprove your claims, stop making things up, and start asking yourself why you have such an emotional hatred for a form of power generation which kills fewer people each year than any other mainstream source of power generation - all without having to change the chemistry of the atmosphere in a way which most scientists agree will cause mass suffering in a few decades.

It must be very upsetting to you that even the most devastating natural disaster pitched against a collection of 6 nuclear power plants led to the death of... absolutely nobody, even though these plants were built before I was even born. Radiation levels outside the plant areas remain stubbornly low - less than you'd experience in a holiday cottage in Newquay. (Which, I suppose, should be evacuated as it is 'unsafe')

I also find it quite sickening that you downplay the destructive consequences of the tsunami in order to try to clear the decks for your non-existent nuclear armaggedon scenario. Tens of thousands of people were actually killed, injured or made homeless, and countless hectares of land will be out of production for a significant period due to plain old 'safe' salt water.

"Led to the death of absolutely nobody" is not really a high standard

Saying that the Fukushima mess hasn't killed anyone (yet) doesn't really make for a ringing recommendation for nuclear power, in my view. The stuff that is spewed all over the ground and in the water is stuff that gives people cancer over the long term... so it's kind of disingenuous to say that nobody has any signs of cancer yet, so A+ for the Fukushima disaster!

Salt is not "a killer". Anything in excess can be harmful (even too much plain old water can be harmful)... that is not the same as something which, in and of itself, is a poison. Radioactive isotopes are poisonous. If you get them inside your body, the only question is how soon can your body flush out the poison before it does too much irreversible damage. In some cases the body cannot flush the poison out fast enough (cesium), in others, not ever (strontium).

Saying salt is a killer and windmills "kill" people proves what exactly? Salt, taken in moderation, is healthy. Windmills, constructed safely and serviced carefully and safely, don't kill anyone. It is a bit of logical sleight of hand to claim that non-nuclear power "kills" people.

My point remains the same. The risk associated with nuclear power generation is too high. It has to be handled nearly perfectly from cradle to grave, whether you are looking at the fuel, the construction of and failsafes built into the plants, the waste, etc. etc. etc. It's a chain where every link is critical and cannot be broken. Witness the case at Fukushima. The earthquake also caused an oil storage depot to blow up in Chiba; it's not still burning and spewing oil all over the place. Fukushima, on the other hand, is still not under control and the full extent of its contamination of the environment is unknown.

As for the ad hominem attacks claiming I have some sort of emotional hatred of nuclear power, or want to downplay the tsunami, etc.... really? Because I refuse to go along with this preposterous nonsense masquerading as journalism in the Reg pages, and I am willing to call out El Reg on what I consider to be bad reporting, somehow I must be an evil or sad or pathetic or ignorant "sort of person"? Errr... no.

Further to the point of downplaying the tsunami: the triumphalism evidenced in the articles the Reg has published on this topic downplays the consequences of this disaster, in my view. People can't go to their homes or jobs and farmers can't farm, etc. but Messrs. Orlowski and Page would have us believe this is all some sort of bureaucratic boondoggle and the poor misguided slobs in the Japanese government are just trying to cover their asses.

Similarly, they dismiss any discussion of the aftereffects of Chernobyl (wildlife mutations, cancer in the surrounding human population) as overblown nonsense... we are not talking about UFO articles on Pravda here. There are reputable scientists who can back up their claims that yes, Chernobyl had an effect on people's health, and yes, Fukushima is a huge clusterfuck that by no means vindicates the safety procedures of either that particular plant or the whole industry.

I can't help but wonder why the Register, normally a bastion of skepticism and of not toeing the party line (whatever the party), has suddenly taken it upon itself to claim loudly and repeatedly that Fukushima is not a disaster and was handled just fine. Meantime, the news reports keep coming out that more of this or that poisonous isotope was released than initially estimated, the exclusion zone is not going away, and the plant is not going to be under control any time soon.

If the plant was back up and running right now, and the most contamination that leaked was some stuff with a brief half-life, and there was no exclusion zone... then I might buy into pronouncements declaring we should build more Fukushimas, and I might snicker at the "mummy mummy there's a nuclear monster" asides as well.

But that is not where we are and the Reg is ignoring reportage and data that undermine its editorial position that nuclear power is just fine and dandy. These are all opinion pieces, not factual reporting.

May i suggest

That, now it is clear that any report from a `lobbyist group` is used as proof for one´s own theory/opinion, that you change your tag line from `Biting the hand that feeds IT ` to `Getting nourished by the dick it sucks`?

From the IAEA site; `The IAEA's mission is guided by the interests and needs of Member States`

(Although probably only for conspiry theorists nice detail; the current boss of the IAEA is... Japanese!)

"Safe limits for everything. This concept also applies to radiation and radioactive isotopes."

Um, no. You are confusing overdose with safe limit.

Food is something your body needs to survive. It's possible to overdose on one particular kind of food and thus harm your body (e.g. salt) but in general, food is not poison. You can overdose on water but you can't live without it.

Poison is something that harms your body. Your body doesn't need it and you can live quite happily without it. It might tolerate some level of insult from the poison, or it might not. The effects could be immediate or they could be delayed (cancer).

Salt is food.

Radioactive isotopes are poison.

Arguing that nuclear power is A-OK because human cells are "designed to repair DNA damage" doesn't make any sense. It's like saying that riding a motorcycle without a helmet is A-OK because nature has equipped you with a skull.

Arguing that death by salt overdose is just as bad as death by radiation poisoning, therefore nuclear power is A-OK makes no sense either. I can't think of an analogy to point out the absurdity of this argument... it's already extremely absurd in its own right.

As long as nuclear power is used, there is always a risk of catastrophic failure of containment systems. Containment systems at Fukushima failed and there is definitely radioactive cesium in the environment and very probably a number of other long-lived isotopes. In the ocean, this does not magically go away any more than it does on land. It accumulates in the food chain.

The more Chernobyls and Fukushimas occur, the more the planetary ecosystem gets polluted with radiation. Saying that so far the pollution in some places is sometimes the same as background radiation in such and such other place doesn't mean anything. It's like saying a pile of garbage that keeps growing is no problem because it isn't yet as big as a mountain of trash. Why not just stop piling up the garbage?

Melt-through, anyone?

So maybe, possibly, there might be a melt-through. http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/06/08/3238720.htm Sounds like they're trying not to give us the bad news all at once.

Fukushima is still a good example of how good engineering not only attempts to minimize the chance of failure, but also set up failure modes to mitigate the effects of worst-case scenarios. As events unfold, it is also becoming a reminder of what is at risk.

There are three parts to risk management: 1) the odds, 2) what you have to gain, and 3) what you risk losing. The problem with nuclear power is not 1 or 2, it's 3. If I wasn't addicted to cheap, plentiful electricity, I'd probably be against it...

risk management

"There are three parts to risk management: 1) the odds"

Indeed so.

Part of calculating the odds is looking at what failures are possible, and the chances of them happening. Another part of that analysis is looking at the chances of multiple failures. When failures are independent, the total probability is the result of multiplying the individual probabilities, ie it gets smaller as more failure modes are considered, as you might intuitively expect.

When failures aren't independent but cascade consequentially, the probabilities don't multiply, you get basically what you started with. "Failure mode effects analysis (FMEA)" or "fault tree analysis" is the generic term for this kind of analysis. People working in industries where safety is important should be familiar with the terms and the concepts.

An example.

The probability of a tsunami going over the wall is 10% in forty years.

The probability of an incoming grid failure is 10% in a year (say).

The probability of a backup generator failure is 10% in a year (say).

Assume those are independent, that the station survives intact unless all three happens, and multiply all that lot together and arguably it looks reasonably safe, considering the benefits.

But they are not independent. If you get a tsunami big enough to go over the wall, your backup generator is inevitably dead [1] (because the station design didn't plan for this) and the chances of the incoming grid being dead might as well be 100% too. So all three inevitably happen and the station is inevitably in trouble once the first one happened. So is the rest of the country, which is really quite sad, but that is not directly relevant to a discussion on nuclear safety.

Same as the chances of an aircraft impact on a nuclear power station are no longer the low statistical probability of a random aircraft crashing randomly on a random nuclear station; post 9/11 they are now the inevitable certainty that sooner or later someone will plan such a thing and maybe if they are lucky they will get to do it.

Oddly enough, the UK has recently decided that the possibility of, and resistance to, aircraft impact no longer need to be considered as part of the safety case for building a nuclear power station (and unfortunately the EU regulators appear to have been convinced too?).

Still, the nuclear industry and its lobbyists would never lie to us or conceal inconvenient facts or introduce blatant distractions would they, so it must be OK.

[1] TEPCO hadn't been performing the statutorily required checks on the backup generator so it may not even have needed a three-event cascade to cause the Fukushima consequences. If the backup had an undetected fault it would only have needed a failure of the incoming grid to cause the cooling system to fail. Think about that for a few moments before you inevitably downvote this.

Never give up never surrender

I was missing Lewis Page's "pieces" on Fukushima.

In the meantime here in Japan, 1 million people demonstrated against nuclear. It's a huge number, considering that, culturally, the Japanese hardly ever demonstrate about anything.

Japanese are not happy at all with the deal they got. Yes, maybe nobody has had the chance to develop a cancer yet, and I hope it stays that way.. but the disruption that this caused is enormous.

The quake was a big scare in Tokyo as well.. but it came and went. Now we have to worry about what we eat and what water we drink. There is enough bottled water, but it runs out quickly. Sometimes you are only left with a 2L bottle of water for 600 yen (~$7). Even some Korean water has appeared in the stores.

Is it all just fear ? Really ? Near Fukushima the levels are constantly raised so that kids are "safe again" to play outside the school. What was dangerous yesterday, suddenly becomes safe today.

Of course many parents protest about this, but scolding politicians that try to reduce the perception of danger only gets you so far.. the risk is still there and you either take it for your children or move your life somewhere else ..easier said than done, especially for entire families.

You can color this disaster as pink as you want.. it all started with a rushed article: "no damage done, I love nuclear!".. but the news are worse and worse every day and The Register keeps pretending that it's all fine.

We went from "nothing to see here kids" to admission of much worse radioactive spills than first imagined and now a melt-though.

If you want to risk to live the same situation.. go ahead. In the mean time I know for sure that nuclear power (as in nuclear fission) is all but dead in Japan.. it's not about being easily scared, it's about being there and not wanting to risk living in the same situation again.

There's no melt-through, have another banana, book a flight to Madras

And stop downplaying the destructive consequences of the tsunami in order to try to clear the decks for your non-existent nuclear armaggedon scenario.

------------

So sayeth the folk tarring and feathering anyone with the temerity to speak up against nuclear power. Geniuses and sage prognosticators they are, all of whom of course are nuclear power plant engineers who just happened to stop by El Reg to set the record straight for poor souls such as the fellow above living in Japan on $7 bottled water thanks to his woefully misinformed notions as to what actually constitutes a nuclear power plant crisis. Nobody has got cancer yet, what is he complaining about anyway? 15 people fell off windmills in the time it took to read this post. And did any people fell off a nuclear power plant? That's right, didn't think so. Now eat your radioactive cesium, a little radiation does a body good!

P.S. "What precautions do you take against radiation in your daily life" as some kind of witty riposte to a thumbs down on Fukushima is like inquiring "soooo... what do you do to avoid inhaling second hand smoke anyway" of someone pointing out a massive forest fire up the hill.

Here's a "sensible" link to strontium contamination

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110613p2g00m0dm002000c.html

But I'm sure the wise felows downvoting my posts and lambasting me with ad hominem attacks will be quite happy to blow it off. Particularly since no-one has developed any bone cancer in the last two weeks, it's of no concern.

Normally the Register would be the first to seize upon these little revisions to prior estimates ("Whoops turns out twice as much nasty leaked out as we first told you") and bits of bad news leaked out in dribs and drabs ("Oh you mean *radioactive* strontium? Sure, there's a bit about") as evidence that perhaps not all is as rosy over there by the exploded out-of-control nuclear power plant in the middle of an evacuation zone as the bureaucrats would have us believe.

Instead the Register keeps stubbornly insisting that because no one was flash-fried in the Fukushima debacle, all is hunky-dory, not only with that particular plant, but with nuclear power in general.

It's disappointing. Not only do these ridiculous nuclear cheerleading articles damage the credibility of Page & Orlowski, they damage the credibility of the Register. And pillorying readers who dare to question nuclear power as a safe way to generate electricity, mocking them as anti-Jetsons (whatever the fuck that is supposed to signify), etc. only makes the Register appear all the more petty and small.

It would have served the Register better to keep the Fukushima reporting balanced and factual, and leave the editorializing till at least the plant was brought back under control. Right now too many facts are still unknown.

We do keep seeing articles with revised contamination estimates and "oh by the way" mentions of additional repercussions not discussed previously. Given that it's going to be a good long while before Fukushima is back under control and the evacuation zone lifted, it is extremely poor form (as opposed to the Register's usual brand of witty cheekiness) to go rambling on about how the whole thing is a trumped up scare designed by hippies to put the poor little put-upon innocent nuclear power industry out of business.