Like many others, when the earthquake and then tsunami hit Japan I was appalled at the scope and magnitude of the destruction and fearful that the death toll would be high. I was also very concerned about the situation at Fukushima. As the situation developed over the following days I took on a few different roles. I wrote diaries providing general information about nuclear plant operations and containment systems and also about the specifics of the plants at Fukushima. I also was active in the comments of other diaries trying to maintain a distinction between what was known, what was speculated, and what was pure rubbish. I was inspired to do this on the morning of Saturday March 12th. I immediately checked DKos when I got online that morning because I was certain that if there were developments at the plant it would be diaried. Sure enough, right at the top of the rec list was "Reactor explodes at Fukushima!" It was only after a half hour of first reading the diary and then comments that I discovered that it was not the reactor itself that exploded.
To be quite frank I was pissed off at being emotionally manipulated in that manner. Yes, there was a bad situation going on but it was nowhere near what was being reported in the diary. I also recalled that during the accident at Three Mile Island there were numerous health problems caused directly by stress resulting from bogus rumors and the lack of solid information and understanding. I felt it was a service to the community to help people understand the issues by providing them background on the systems involved, how they worked, and what their known vulnerabilities were.
I also felt it was a service to the community to tamp down "silly season" stories. In this category I put things like links from ENENEWS that warned of killer cesium clouds passing over the United States and how there was a short video showing a mapping of the radiation that was mysteriously tacked onto the end of a linked Norwegian report on something else, and then mysteriously disappeared from the end of said report. Or another story from either there or NATURALNEWS about an interview on Russian TV in which somebody who had been involved with Chernobyl questioned whether there hadn't been a nuclear explosion at Fukushima in addition to hydrogen explosions.
Anyway, I followed the story over the following month as closely as I could and wrote a number of status update diaries. In retrospect, much of the information in them remains valid but on the key question of whether the reactor vessels themselves remained intact, I continued to report and believe that they were in fact intact. This has recently been confirmed to not be the case. I regret having passed along this bad information and recently wrote a diary apologizing for doing so. There are some for whom this just wasn't enough, or for whom this was done purely for reasons of propagandizing, trying to restore my credibility.
Much of this comes down to a question of integrity and good faith. There is also the question of motives involved. I've been accused of not being cynical enough regarding TEPCO and this may be true. I gave up living life from a cynical perspective a few decades ago. When I was in my early twenties I came to see being somewhat hardened and cynical as being what it took to be a serious mature adult. But over time I came to recognize that I didn't like the life that that viewpoint was creating for me and I gave it up. Being cynical didn't make me an adult, it just made me cynical. The best definition I've encountered for cynicism is, "A sneering disbelief in the good intentions of others." I came to dislike the person this made me.
In its place I have adopted a view of reality that acknowledges the ever-shifting nature of knowledge. I evaluate new information based on how it fits in with what I already believe I know, judging its consistency and reasonableness. I also change my beliefs as new information becomes available. I see all of life as an inquiry, not as a known, and I do my best to get as close to reality as possible without ever necessarily knowing for certain whether I'm there. This is the approach I took with the events at Fukushima.
Another reason I wasn't as skeptical of the information coming from TEPCO was the fact that they had also been victims of the earthquake and tsunami. I saw no shame in them admitting whatever the extent of damage they had sustained, especially as they were in the process of requesting assistance in the crisis. Had this incident began as a TEPCO screwup without the earthquake and tsunami initiating it then I could see the legitimacy of having a skeptical view from the start. But that was not the case here.
As far as motives, I worked in the industry years ago and ended up leaving in the midst of an ugly situation. I had caused the company some embarrassment by comments I made regarding advice we received in a training course. I had a very specific technical question about how to reassign sensor weighting factors during a federally mandated test. In response to my question the vendors providing the course responded by telling me to tap dance around the question with the NRC. They obviously didn't know the answer themselves, but instead of telling me that they'd get back to me they gave me this bullshit answer. And so I reported it on my course evaluation form. This was quite significant considering that the parent company, GPUN, were the owners of Three Mile Island as well as Oyster Creek and had been criminally charged in connection with falsifying records in the same exact testing process at TMI.
So as a result, Art, the Director of Engineering, was called to Washington, DC to testify before Congressman Markey's House of Representatives energy subcommittee. I think they wanted to know why it was that only one person out of the six in this course bothered to mention the tapdancing episode. This made me a fairly unpopular person in some quarters though aside from hearing through the grapevine that Art was pissed at me, there were no serious direct ramifications ... until I gave them an opening based on my predilection for marijuana. For those who are interested I wrote a series of diaries about this incident back in 2009: Nukes, Drugs, and Rock and Roll - part I.
Suffice it to say that I have no reasons for feeling anything warm and fuzzy towards the industry. This incident caused me to reinvent myself as a musician, (my first love), and to learn home repair skills to help survive. Over the past couple of months I have spent considerable time under a house in the crawl space cutting out an old cast iron and galvanized sewage system and replacing it with PVC and modern fittings. Other jobs may not have been quite as nasty work, but similar in nature. My last industry paycheck was well over two decades ago and I likewise sold off all my company stock years ago. Not a penny comes into my pocket as a result of my writing about nuclear power.
Meanwhile, a man who has been doing a good deal of video reporting on Fukushima, Arnie Gunderson, does have a financial stake in the outcome. He also left the industry as a whistleblower just a few years after myself. His treatment by NES was probably no more fair than mine by GPUN, possibly less. I don't know the details of his story. I do know that he went on to become an executive in the wind power consulting industry and has made a side career using his credentials as a nuclear engineer to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt regarding nuclear as an energy source. I also know that a video I watched in which he analyzed the situation at the unit 4 fuel pool was over the top in both its tone and conclusions. Putting all this together I came to see Arnie as a propagandist, not someone engaging in an honest inquiry. He wasn't as blatant as the diarist who screamed about the exploding reactor, but traveling the same path.
And so, to the point of my title, in a rec listed diary yesterday there was an account of an interview that Arnie gave to Al Jazeera. Various comments were made in the diary regarding the legitimacy of the source. This was misunderstood by some to be about Al Jazeera. I added a comment explaining that Arnie was the problem, not Al Jazeera. For my efforts I was labeled an industry shithead who was besmirching the good name of a whistleblower. This comment was uprate by two people with no HRs.
I've become convinced that a certain percentage of the hard core anti-nuclear activists are akin to religious fundamentalists. In their minds nuclear power is pure evil and anyone or anything having to do with it is evil by association. There is no chance for discussion or reason, they have the truth and I'm an industry shithead. Nice to know where things stand.