Reliable sources of Japan crisis information/updates

Michael Levi, senior fellow on energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations, offers a nice bit of advice for vetting the quality of talking heads called in to discuss the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear crisis in Japan. Short version: Be skeptical of policy analysts who want to school you on physics.

He also suggests a couple of good, reliable sources of information, including David Lochbaum with the Union of Concerned Scientists; Olli Heinonen, formerly of the IAEA and now at Harvard, and the industry site I suggested yesterday, World Nuclear News.

I'd also add to that: Cristine Russell, who has been linking to some great articles on her Twitter feed and is putting together a list of who is getting this story right, and who's not; and New Scientist's ongoing coverage as part of their Short Sharp Science blog.

Image: Has nothing to do with any of this, except that I though we could all use some cute kitten pictures right about now. Some rights reserved by uzi978

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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Ugly Canuck, you’ll like this:

1716: The Japanese-born head of the International Energy Agency chief has warned that the cost of fighting global warming will rise if there is a backlash against nuclear power. “I think it is very difficult (to fight global warming), even impossible, without using nuclear power,” Nobuo Tanaka said, according to Reuters in Oslo.
- anansi133
  
  Any situation in which the economy does not expand is considered a losing scenario. It’s inconceivable to these people that we might get by on less energy, more exercise, and somehow still be happier.
  
  This attitude is even worse in Japan than in the US, because their economy tries so hard to create a local market for its goods. The social pressure to self-actualize through consumerism is amazing.
  
  I suppose it goes without saying that an out-of-control human economy is the real problem, and global warming just a side effect.
straponego

My rule of thumb when a corporation, especially an energy concern, estimates existing and imminent environmental damage: multiply by 100. This worked quite well for the TVA disaster and the BP spill.

When they tell you everything is fine and that there’s no need to be alarmed, grab your bags go. Beat the rush.
- MrCompletely
  
  Mr. Ego, an excellent estimating rule – I thought a particularly clear example was the press conference which managed to combine the messages “third large explosion breaks inner containment,” “all cooling systems offline” and “no risk to public safety.”
  
  Things That Make You Go ‘Hmmmmmmm’, 2011 ed.
  
  Thus my attempt to triangulate somewhere approximately in the area of the truth by collating multiple sources.
plorry

Your attempts to dull the pain with a cute picture are in vain; The kitten picture reminds me of the tragedy of “Cat Island” (Tashirojima), which was completely submerged during the tsunami.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tashirojima

Don’t forget to donate to animal rescue causes in Japan as well!
- travtastic
  
  awjtawjt
  
  @straponego, you’re a dildo after my own heart.
  
  Hey, what I’m wondering is why there is no cctv footage of the inside of the reactor housing, inside the containment vessel, looking at the reactor vessel, looking through a port to the reactor cores. ANYTHING. I mean, didn’t they build some kind of viewing device? What is this, 1972? Oh wait, it is. I forgot that we deemed 1965 technology perfectly safe for use in 2011.
  
  Oh, btw, there are a handful of RBMK reactors still in operation in Russia. Those are the ones with only partial containment, essentially a water jacket around the outside and two large, perforated concrete disks on the top and bottom.
- MrCompletely
  
  Thanks for your ongoing focus on finding reliable sources of information. I found this story to be interesting, unsurprising and depressing (but important):
  
  Chernobyl clean-up expert slams Japan, IAEA
  
  http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/15/us-japan-nuclear-chernobyl-idUSTRE72E5MV20110315
  
  e.g. “Andreev said a fire which released radiation on Tuesday involving spent fuel rods stored close to reactors at Fukushima looked like an example of putting profit before safety:
  
  “The Japanese were very greedy and they used every square inch of the space. But when you have a dense placing of spent fuel in the basin you have a high possibility of fire if the water is removed from the basin,” Andreev said.”
  
  Thanks again for your efforts.
- a_user
  
  1623: The head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog said that there was a “possibility of core damage” at the No. 2 unit of the damaged Fukushima power plant. The damage would be “less than five percent”, IAEA chief Yukiya Amano said, according to Reuters.
  
  1619: The radiation plume from the damaged nuclear power could reach Tokyo, according to predications from a US not-for-profit group, the Union for Concerned Scientists.
  
  BBC live
  
  time stamp 01:19,01:23 Japan time
- Ugly Canuck
  
  Perhaps this image would suit some reading this better:
  
  http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Screen-shot-2011-03-14-at-4.22.21-AM.png
  
  …it all does get to be too much sometimes.
  
  Thanx to Naked capitalism for the pic!
  
  http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/
- benchscientist
  
  Maggie
  Thanks for the info sources and the cute kitty pics.
- laukarlueng
  
  You had me until “Council on Foreign Relations” and you definitely lost me at “Union of Concerned Scientists”.
- jphilby
  
  “I think it is very difficult (to fight global warming), even impossible, without using nuclear power…”
  
  Hah! last ditch scream of surreality …
  
  What’s most ironic is that Japan is surrounded by an ocean of wind power that dwarfs the electricity it consumes now and in the foreseeable future.
- MrCompletely
  
  It increasingly appears from what I’m picking up at least that the biggest risk of large scale radiation release incident is actually related to the spent fuel pools and not the reactors. There’s no consensus or anything but the aggregate ‘mean expert opinion’ seems to be that the cores would most likely melt down, literally, causing localized contamination, but without great likelihood of a large explosive incident that would put contamination into the atmosphere. However a fire in the pools would create such an atmospheric dispersal.
  
  e.g. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/0315/Japan-nuclear-crisis-eclipses-Three-Mile-Island-nears-Chernobyl-league
  
  Does this seem like an accurate or at least reasonable interpretation of the available information?
  
  By all means continue interpolating teh funniez, I find the juxtaposition to be a much needed dash of surrealism!
  
  “Quodlibet for Compound Mega-Disaster and LOLcats in C”
- MrCompletely
  
  …although in what’s becoming a typical experience in this situation, after posting that I immediately read more about a scenario for severe atmospheric contamination from the reactors, as result of a steam explosion or fast vaporization from the “suppression pools” (different from the spent fuel pools) immediately under the cores, where they’ve been dumping the Cs137 and I131…
  
  moar kittehz plz?