Not a beach.

or Taking care of business.
(inspired by OKEJ, being OK in Swedish, from the subtitles to 'Anywhere But Here' with Susan Sarandon & Natalie Portman)
Up, Down, Appendices, Postscript.

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Otis Redding, Respect, 1965. what you want honey you got it and what you need baby you've got it all I'm asking is for a little respect when I come home do me wrong honey if you want to you can do me wrong honey while I'm gone but all I'm asking is for a little respect when I come home hey little girl you're so sweeter than honey and I'm about to give you all of my money but all I'm asking is for a little respect when I come home this is what I want this is what I need I got to got to have it give it everything I need

Aretha Franklin, Respect, 1967. what you want baby I got what you need you know I got it all I'm asking is for a little respect when you come home hey baby just a little bit when you come home I ain't gonna do you wrong while you gone I ain't gonna do you wrong 'cause I don't want to all I'm asking is for a little respect when you come home just a little bit baby come on I'm about to give you all my money and all I'm asking in return honey is to give me my propers when you get home just a just a yeah baby ooo your kisses sweeter than honey and guess what so is my money all I want you to do for me is give it to me when you get home yeah baby whip it to me when you get home just a little bit just a little bit r e s p e c t find out what it means to me r e s p e c t take care of t c b sock it to me all the time keep on turning ride it out baby and I ain't lyin' ree ree ree ree stop please come home ree ree ree ree

There was a fair bit of water under the bridge between 1965 & 1967. If Otis wasn't as explicit about the sex as Aretha, it was probably well understood (as I remember), making the two stories about equivalent.

So ... respect. How do you show it? With money? Or with sex? Is it both? Or neither? Is it both sex & money plus something else?

All this makes me think of Dylan's Dignity, also ultimately undefined.

Here's something strange ... her sisters Erma & Carolyn were singing backup there and a big part of it, but no-where can I find any picture of the three of them together (?)

---

I went over to the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) to see the David Blackwood exhibit.

Twenty dollars to get in - Ai Ai Ai! Which was barely compensated by the lovely woman collecting it at the gate and her willing laugh.

But so, there they had some originals ... which I had never seen before; and after more than an hour (but not two, this is telling) ... I was entirely under-whelmed and disappointed. There was a small room devoted to Fire Down On The Labrador and the whale's smile expresses neither sardonic glee nor ... anything. And too many images, of punts & trap-skiffs, of splitting knives, of people's visages; simply did not relate to what I know of these things and the place, not at all. A parody of Newfoundland seems to be all that remains.

About the same thing happened with Don Wright's Red Trench when I saw it years ago at The Rooms in St. John's. The whole out-of-scale clump of buildings seems a paean to what can be achieved in the way of distortion with enough passive-agressive angst - Chris Pratt and his brother Philip and the PHB Group Inc..

Icons tumbling all 'round eh?

Just lucky I guess - that some of the vaginas I discovered, welcomed me.

Lol Pomeroy, Harold Ryan, and me; we were jigging one day off Little Paradise in Placentia Bay, when a whale passed just beneath us almost scraping the keel. We saw the bow-wave coming and held our breaths, hearts stopped; a gentle blessing.

When I showed up in St. John's on my Triumph-650 in ... 1968? ... one of the first people I met was an English prof, another CFA, who told me "the space is still open here." He was so right, and if I had been smart I would have gone straight out and bought some. It was more than a decade before I discovered how effectively the bureaucrat numbskulls would cripple & eliminate that openness - simple really - the k-k-Canada Building Code and extended municipal boundaries, done deal. And there it is - gone! Not forever of course.

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"I caught this morning morning's minion," and "Generations have trod, have trod, have trod," were mainstays. But I guess this is where I run out from between the lines of Gerard Manley Hopkins' anodyne sentiment; which proves to be indeed a "windpuff-bonnet of fawn-froth." Run right off the end of "O let them be left, wildness and wet; long live the weeds and the wilderness yet," and into the (real) tall grass. Bah humbug.

Still and all, that was sometime before 1918 and this is 2011 ... give the guy a break, cut 'im some slack ... there's been some urbanization gone on in the meantime eh?

Not such a knucklehead as not to know that a park is not a forest. But then last week I went for a walk on the beach - and found that it is not a beach. Ok ok, ok, I already knew. I've known for years. The famous beaches of Ipanema & Copacabana are not beaches either. They regularly bring many many many truckloads of sand to keep them all looking like beaches, old sand dug from pits; build subtle and not so subtle breakwaters & spits to coerce the waves into doing their least. A verisimilitude of a beach then eh? But not a beach.

Walking back (to this place which is not very much like a home) I noticed that most of the seeds were gone from the tufts of pampas grass ... A man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest. An almost entirely derivative pattern of thought then eh? Eh? Eh? Eh!

So I gathered some of the pampas seeds that were left on the stalks to plant in my garden (which is hardly a garden).

Spring has sprung you know and it looks like one (or maybe two) of the Sumac seeds I planted has decided to grow.

The seeds came from a tree at the side of an abandoned railway track, which is no more a forest than the park is - closer though, definitely closer. And I 'stratified' and buried as many of the seeds as would fit into one of the pots. Sumac seeds are known (and here) to be very difficult to germinate - but at the least they would provide compost.

And now something has sprouted which might be one (or even two) of them. The clue is the tuft in the crotch of it - if you look at the picture you can see it - which is not usual in the weeds I see (weed being a relative term).

Sumac trees in and of themselves are still wild ... as am I.

(If increasingly breathless - the cigarettes are doing their work.)

Miss Jodie posted one of her poems, and I was off like a rabbit after old memories of spring. Versions of ee cummings' O sweet spontaneous here and here. Written sometime around 1920. It was once explained to me that cummings' punctuation represents orgasms & such like related. And he was known for so called 'typographical experiments' so exact placement might have been important to him. Difficult to know now, at this late date, exactly how it worked itself out. The dot between 'beauty' and 'how' is sometimes there, sometimes not. And the majority of what propagates around the web is about 'purient' (?) philosophers. Oh well. What's one orgasm more or less? I am suspicious of the 1976 edition I got from the Toronto Public Library, which claims to be somehow 'original' - I can't quite accept that he would settle for a type-writer font.

O sweet spontaneous earth how often have the doting        fingers of prurient philosophers pinched and poked thee ,has the naughty thumb of science prodded thy     beauty  .  how often have religions taken thee upon their scraggy knees squeezing and buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive gods     (but true to the incomparable couch of death thy rhythmic lover       thou answerest them only with                spring)

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Here we are, facing important if not ultimate choices and decisions, and the simple facts are nigh on impossible to communicate or understand.

Canada permits 7,000 becquerels of (Tritium) radioactivity per litre of drinking water. Japan permits 100 becquerels of (Iodine-131) radioactivity per litre of drinking water for infants, and 300 becquerels for adults.

I spent the best part of a day trying to figgure it out, and came up with this (shamefully lame, I know):

All numbers except 'one' are approximate.

A becquerel is one radioactive atom decaying per second, a measure of 'activity'.

Both atomic mass and half-life figure into the becquerel equation, so the sizes (relatively small Tritium & relatively large Iodine) and half-lives (12 years for Tritium and 8 hours for Iodine-131) have already been factored in by the time you come up with a number in becquerels.

BUT decay of radioactive Iodine releases gamma (350 keV) & high-energy beta radiation (200-600 keV), and Tritium decay releases only (relatively) low-energy beta radiation (20 keV), and while Iodine tends to concentrate in thyroid tissue, Tritium tends not to stick very long.

KeV is kilo electron volts, a measure of energy and hence a measure of 'penetration' (see Kinsey maybe :-) - 200-600 keV beta particles are good for a millimetere or two. For reference, a thyroid gland (Adam's apple) is a few centimetres; keeping in mind that the Iodine that concentrates there does so throughout.

SO a direct comparison the 7,000 acceptable becquerels per litre of Canadian Tritium with the 100 (for infants) to 300 (for adults) acceptable becquerels per litre of Iodine-131 in Japanese drinking water doesn't wash (pardon the pun) ... when Tritium decays it forms Helium, so a wag might say "drink more Tritium and lighten up."

On the other hand, neither radioactive Iodine nor Tritium is found in nature to speak of. Tiny amounts are created by cosmic rays, but these are truly tiny: 2 becquerels per litre of Tritium; no number that I could find for Iodine but a ratio of stable to radioactive of 10 million to one. So ... very VERY little of this stuff around at all except for what we humans have made.

All of this from obvious sources, Wikipedia and the like. But I still have no idea of what a number in becquerels actually represents in terms of effect. There is exposure time and proximity to consider. I was thinking of trying to correlate with say, a sunburn, or the feeling you get dancing around a bonfire ... and how long would that take I wonder?

Nevermind that there are not just Tritium and Iodine-131 to be concerned about. And aside from radioactivity there are all of the endocrine disruptors and potential disruptors - What about that shit?

Here:

"In a new sign of the contamination problem, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said Saturday a sample of seawater taken Friday from a monitoring station at the plant showed the level of iodine 131 at 50 becquerels per cubic centimeter — 1,250 times the legal limit.

Drinking a half liter of that water would be equivalent to getting a 1 millisievert dose, the agency said, roughly the amount a person gets in one year from natural sources."

 

"The National Institute of Radiological Sciences said that the radioactivity of the water that the three injured workers had stepped into was 10,000 times the level normally seen in coolant water at the plant. It said that the amount of radiation the workers were thought to have been exposed to in the water was two to six sieverts.

Even two sieverts is eight times the new 250-millisievert annual exposure limit set for workers at Daiichi in the days after the disaster; the previous limit was 100. Tokyo Electric officials said that water with an equally high radiation level had been found in the Reactor No. 1 building, The Associated Press reported.

Skin exposures of two to six sieverts will cause severe burns, according to Dr. David J. Brenner, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University. But if those doses reach the whole body and not just the skin 'you’re at a very high risk of dying,' he said.

At a dose of four sieverts, half of the people exposed will die, Dr. Brenner said."

 

"Michael Friedlander, a former nuclear power plant operator in the United States, said that the presence of radioactive cobalt and molybdenum in water samples taken from the basement of the turbine building raised the possibility of corrosion as a cause.

Both materials typically occur not because of fission, but because of routine corrosion in a reactor and its associated piping over the course of many years of use, he said."

 

So, Cobalt - half-life 5 years, beta and gamma energies in the MeV range, and Molybdenum - half-life a few days, beta energies 100-600 KeV. These numbers are just guesses - it is too complicated for me to understand. And there is another Iodine, 134, and Cesium, Technetium, Barium and Lanthanum (that last one gives me pause, any relation to Laudanum?). What's the acceptable standard for all this then?

With all of these measley shit-head bureaucrats on the case how is it that there is not a clear, understandable, and integrated standard for what is acceptable in drinking water?

There's my garden, such as it is. If the sprouts turn out to be Sumac? Hallelujah! If not ... oh well. And if the Pampas grass don't grow? ... ok too ... all good.

Sage, Rosemary & Thyme so far ... and if you rub a single leaf between your fingers, arises an enchanting odour neither sweet nor bitter that is ... enough ... (see The Life and Times of Michael K).

(but true to the incomparable couch of death, thy rhythmic lover, thou answerest them only with ... spring)

Be well.

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Postscript:

At first there was nothing in the english press about the situation at Jirau where the workers rioted on the 17th. Jirau and Santo Antonio dams are part of the Madeira River hydroelectric complex being built in Brazil.

Eventually the Wall Street Journal picked it up - bringing to mind Noam Chomsky's recommendation to keep an eye on the business press (who have to report what is useful to the owners of this damned shebang).

The story is murky: union struggles, bad faith on all sides, government force; the stories here do not begin to tell it, not by any means:

Obras de Jirau estão paralisadas e trabalhadores abandonam o local, 17/03/2011. This article includes more photographs and a video - follow the link to the source below.

 

Trabalhadores de Jirau são alojados no Ginásio do Sesi em Porto Velho, 17/03/2011.

 

O fim da agonia: maior parte de operários de Jirau já seguiu as cidades de origem, 20/03/2011.

 

Brazil Sends Force To Jirau Dam After Riots, Wall Street Journal, Paulo Winterstein, March 18 2011.

 

Construction Resumes At Brazil's Jirau Hydro Dam After Riots, Wall Street Journal, Diana Kinch, March 21 2011.

 

 
I am trying to read Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine. Such a bushel and a peck and a BALE of nonsense and yet, a sort of truth too ... trying to paint reality with what amounts to 99% ideology ... This kind of writing seems more like a wedge to sort & separate readers into absolute believers & absolute deniers. And what use is that? Richard Wilkinson & Kate Pickett with their Spirit Level go the same way (if less so) it seems to me.

These people have got their minds around fundamental and essential notions; but they can't seem to write about it without pretending to be seagulls (that shit unpredictably from heights). Must be a failure of public education, is that it? They missed out on How-To-Write-A-Paragraph-101? Sick that day? Off smoking dope?

I hope the royalties deliver them all to comfortable cottages somewhere nice with a view of water.

Human beings live and exist only through contact with others. Right from It-Takes-Two-To-Tango on up through language and culture to the sublime (if you make it there). Maybe I should qualify it as 'fruitful' or 'fecund' contact ... maybe stress that it is not a hierarchy but a way, a story ... whatever. I find myself stopping again and again at this third-hand recounting of the Good Samaritan story. There it is.

Put Illich's notion up beside bourgeois christian forbearance and then do a 'compare & contrast'. The Amish understand this very well - there is simply nothing worse, nothing more full of death and yet not quite dead, than to be shunned. But you don't have to go to the extreme - just pretend neither to see who they are nor hear what they say and always be careful to step (adroitly) around them in the street and you'll be fine. (And never never never send cash in the mail.)


Comics for the 10's
"The Internet is changing human relations."
I know Rodolpho. You listen to me less and less.
"There are almost two billion people connected."

(Oh yeah?)

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Appendices:

1. Obras de Jirau estão paralisadas e trabalhadores abandonam o local, 17/03/2011.

 

2. Trabalhadores de Jirau são alojados no Ginásio do Sesi em Porto Velho, 17/03/2011.

 

3. O fim da agonia: maior parte de operários de Jirau já seguiu as cidades de origem, 20/03/2011.

 

4. Brazil Sends Force To Jirau Dam After Riots, Wall Street Journal, Paulo Winterstein, March 18 2011.

 

5. Construction Resumes At Brazil's Jirau Hydro Dam After Riots, Wall Street Journal, Diana Kinch, March 21 2011.

 

6. Japan Encourages a Wider Evacuation From Reactor Area, Hiroko Tabuchi & Keith Bradsher & David Jolly, March 25 2011.

 

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Obras de Jirau estão paralisadas e trabalhadores abandonam o local, 17/03/2011.

Obras de Jirau estão paralisadas e trabalhadores abandonam o local - A Polícia confirmou ontem (16) que pelo menos 40 ônibus foram incendiados no canteiro de obras da hidrelétrica de Jirau, no Rio Madeira (RO). A confusão teria começado após uma briga entre dois funcionários das obras. Os trabalhadores, que aderiram aos atos, alegam que não existem condições mínimas nos alojamentos e que estão insatisfeitos com os salários. A Camargo Côrrea, empresa do consórcio que está construindo a hidrelétrica, afirma que tudo não passou de uma briga entre alguns trabalhadores e desmente as informações. Hoje (17) aconteceram novos tumultos no canteiro de obras e os trabalhadores marcham, pela BR-364, em direção à cidade mais próxima do canteiro de obras, Jaci Paraná. Eles ameaçaram atear fogo em tudo o que for da empresa. Os comércios de Jaci Paraná foram fechados. Com as novas manifestações, a empresa que havia emitido uma nota alegando que "tudo estava tranquilo" e que as obras haviam sido "retomadas normalmente", emitiu uma nova nota afirmando que as obras foram paralisadas. A Camargo Côrrea também afirmou que os funcionários foram retirados "para garantir sua segurança" e que não é verdadeira a informação "de que há qualquer insatisfação ou reivindicação trabalhista no empreendimento". Entretanto, há informações de que os ônibus foram negados aos trabalhadores que queriam sair do local. Segundo matéria publicada no jornal regional Rondoniaovivo, que entrou em contato telefônico com os trabalhadores, ocorreram pelo menos três mortes. Seriam dois vigias, um da margem esquerda e outro da margem direita, e um motorista, morto a pauladas. Ainda segundo o jornal a assessoria de comunicação do Comando da Polícia Militar informou à reportagem que não existe confirmação de mortes. O Secretário da Segurança de Rondônia, Marcelo Bessa, entregou um ofício ao governador Confúcio Moura requerendo a presença da Força Nacional no local. De acordo com o presidente da Assembleia Legislativa, Valter Araújo (PTB), o governador já alertou o Ministro das Minas e Energia Edson Lobão sobre essa situação de instabilidade nos canteiros de obras. O Parlamentar também afirmou que os consórcios não estão cumprindo com os acordos de compensação, feitos antes do início das obras. "Eles [os consórcios] cumpriram com cerca de 30% do que foi acordado, até mesmo a contratação de mão de obra, que deveria ser toda ela local, não cumpriram. Cerca de 70% dos trabalhadores são de outros estados. Pior é que eles querem que a policia expulse os revoltosos de lá, mas para onde esse povo vai? Certamente virão para a cidade, onde estarão desempregados e desesperados. Não podemos mais permitir essa situação".

Work at Jirau is stopped and workers are leaving the area - The police confirmed yesterday (the 16th) that about 40 busses were burnt in the yard of the Jirau hydro-electric project in Rio Madeira in the state of Rondônia. The confusion had started after a fight between two workers. Workers who joined in the action say that minimum accomodation standards were not met and that they were not satisfied with wages. Camargo Côrrea, one of the companies in the consortium which is building the plant, affirmed that (not?) everything began with a fight between a few workers and denied the information. Today (the 17th) there were new struggles in the yard and the workers marched via BR-364 towards the nearest town, Jaci Paraná. They were threatening to set fire to everything belonging to the company. Businesses in Jaci Paraná were closed. With the latest demonstrations, the company, which had released a note alleging that "everything was tranquil" and that the work had been "recommenced normally", put out a new note admitting that the work was stopped. Camargo Côrrea also said that their workers had been removed "to guarantee their security" and that the information "that there was some worker insatisfaction or demands in the matter," is not true. However, there is information that busses were refused to workers who wished to leave the area. According to what was published in the regional newspaper Rondoniaovivo, which was in contact by telephone with the workers, there were at least three deaths. They were two watchmen, one on the left side and one on the right, and a driver, beaten to death with sticks. Also according to the newspaper, the spokesman for the Military Police said that the deaths had not been confirmed. The Secretary for Security of Rondônia state, Marcelo Bessa, made an official request to Governor Confúcio Moura for troops in the area. With the support of the president of the legislative assembly, Valter Araújo, the Governor had already alerted the Minister of Mines and Energy, Edson Lobão, about the unstable situation at the workplaces. Bessa also said that the consortium had not fulfilling the agreements on compensation made before the project began. "They (the consortium) gave about 30% of what had been agreed, even contracting manual labour which, it had been agreed, would be entirely local. About 70% of the workers are from other states. Worse, they want the police to remove the demonstrators, but where will these people go? Certainly they will return to the town, where they will be unemployed and desperate. We cannot permit this situation."

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Trabalhadores de Jirau são alojados no Ginásio do Sesi em Porto Velho, 17/03/2011.

Trabalhadores de Jirau são alojados no Ginásio do Sesi em Porto Velho Centenas de trabalhadores da Usina de Jirau chegaram há poucos instantes no Ginásio do Sesi, em Porto Velho, escoltados por dezenas de policiais militares. Eles permanecerão no local e o Estado e a Camargo Corrêa providenciarão alimentação. Segundo a assessoria de imprensa da PM, pelo menos 3 mil trabalhadores ficarão no ginásio, localizado no Bairro Lagoa, Zona Sul da Capital.

Jirau workers are housed in the SESI gymnasium in Porto Velho Hundreds of workers from Jirau have just arrived at the SESI (Serviço Social da Indústria - Social Services for Industry) gymnasium in Porto Velho, escorted by dozens of military police. They will stay in the area and the State (of Rodonia) and Camargo Corrêa will provide food. According to a military police spokesman at least 3 thousand workeers will stay in the gymnasium located in the Bairro Lagoa neighbourhood in the southern part of the capital.

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O fim da agonia: maior parte de operários de Jirau já seguiu as cidades de origem, 20/03/2011.

O fim da agonia: maior parte de operários de Jirau já seguiu as cidades de origem Depois de três dias amontoados em boates e um ginásio em Porto Velho, a maior parte dos trabalhadores de Jirau já seguiu para suas cidades de origem, seguindo o cronograma ajustado pela Camargo Corrêa com as autoridades locais. A previsão é que até a segunda-feira todos que queriam retornar aos seus estados já tenham embarcado em aviões ou ônibus. Na manhã deste domingo era grande a movimentação de cerca de 700 trabalhadores no Ginásio do Sesi. Eles formavam longas filas e muitos diziam que estavam há mais de 20 horas aguardando questões burocráticas para embarcarem. Outra reclamação era a limpeza dos banheiros químicos, que gerou um forte odor em toda a região por mais de uma hora. Os trabalhadores estavam organizados em filas e aguardavam a liberação em uma cerca montada pela empresa responsável por Jirau. Por volta das 9h30min apenas duas funcionárias realizavam a triagem e liberavam os ônibus. Dezenas de policiais militares ainda fazem a segurança do local.

The end of the anguish: most Jirau workers have now returned to their cities of origin After three days piled up in clubs and a gymnasium in Porto Velho, most Jirau workers have returned to their cities of origin, according to the schedule arranged by Camargo Corrêa with local authorities. It is expected that by Monday all who wish to return to their states willl have left by air and bus. On Sunday morning there was a lot of movement among the 700 workers in the SESI gymnasium. They formed long lines and many said that they had been waiting more than 20 hours with questions around leaving. Another complaint was the clenliness of the chemical toilets that were producing a strong odour in the area for more than an hour. The workers were organized in lines and waited to pass a fence put up by the company responsible for Jirau. Beginning at 9:30 AM at least two officials were organizing access to the busses. Dozens of military police were still maintaining security in the area.

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Brazil Sends Force To Jirau Dam After Riots, Wall Street Journal, Paulo Winterstein, March 18 2011.

SAO PAULO (Dow Jones) -- Brazil's federal government on Friday authorized the presence of national security forces in the Amazon state of Rondonia after riots at the Jirau dam site halted construction on the 3,450-megawatt dam.

The government said in its official publication Friday that it was sending additional police to the region to ensure public order. The additional police presence will last 30 days and can be renewed.

Protesting workers at the Jirau dam have set fire to buses and damaged part of the worker housing at the site, according to press reports. Jirau is being built by Energia Sustentavel do Brasil, a group comprising France's GDF Suez SA (GSZ.FR), Brazilian construction company Camargo Correa and Brazil's state-controlled utility Centrais Eletricas Brasileiras (EBR, ELET6.BR), or Eletrobras.

Workers have complained about wages and abuse by security officials at the site, according to press reports.

According to the Estado news agency, the riots led the companies to remove remaining workers from the site and halt construction on the dam. The Jirau dam was set to begin operations in March 2012. The halt in construction could push back that date, Energia Sustentavel President Victor Paranhos told Estado.

GDF Suez, which coordinates press requests for the group, didn't immediately return calls seeking comment.

Camargo Correa' press official said that the company is still evaluating damages at the site and will continue to pay workers until they return to work.

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Construction Resumes At Brazil's Jirau Hydro Dam After Riots, Wall Street Journal, Diana Kinch, March 21 2011.

RIO DE JANEIRO (Dow Jones)--Construction work resumed Monday at the Jirau hydroelectric dam in Rondonia state in the Brazilian Amazon after workers' riots, local Estado newswire said in a report. A new timetable will be announced for the plant's development after delays caused by the unrest, the agency said.

Work is also set to restart Tuesday on the construction of the neighboring Santo Antonio dam, also on the Rio Madeira river, Estado said.

Protesting workers at the Jirau dam last week set fire to buses and damaged part of workers' housing at the site, in a protest over wages and abuses by security officials at the site, according to press reports. Jirau is being built by Energia Sustentavel do Brasil, a group comprising France's GDF Suez SA, Brazilian construction company Camargo Correa and Brazil's state-controlled utility Centrais Eletricas Brasileiras, or Eletrobras.

Jirau, designed with a 3,450 megawatt capacity, may now start generating and selling energy in 2013, instead of recent expectations that this would occur in March 2012, Energia Sustentavel President Victor Paranhos told Estado.

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Japan Encourages a Wider Evacuation From Reactor Area, Hiroko Tabuchi & Keith Bradsher & David Jolly, March 25 2011.

TOKYO — New signs emerged Friday that parts of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant were so damaged and contaminated that it would be even harder to bring the plant under control soon.

At the same time, Japanese officials began encouraging people to evacuate a larger band of territory around the complex.

Speaking to a national audience at a news conference on Friday night, two weeks after the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and the devastating tsunami that followed it, Prime Minister Naoto Kan dodged a reporter’s question about whether the government was ordering a full evacuation, saying officials were simply following the recommendation of the Japan Nuclear Safety Commission.

“The situation still requires caution,” Mr. Kan, grave and tired-looking, told the nation. “Our measures are aimed at preventing the circumstances from getting worse.” The authorities said that they would now assist people who wanted to leave the area from 12 to 19 miles outside the plant, and that they were now encouraging “voluntary evacuation” from the area.

Those people had been advised March 15 to remain indoors, while those within a 12-mile radius of the plant had been ordered to evacuate. The United States has recommended that its citizens stay at least 50 miles away.

“The state of the plant is still quite precarious,” Mr. Kan said. “We’re working hard to make sure it doesn’t get worse. We have to ensure there’s no further deterioration.”

In a new sign of the contamination problem, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said Saturday a sample of seawater taken Friday from a monitoring station at the plant showed the level of iodine 131 at 50 becquerels per cubic centimeter — 1,250 times the legal limit.

Drinking a half liter of that water would be equivalent to getting a 1 millisievert dose, the agency said, roughly the amount a person gets in one year from natural sources.

Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy-director general at the safety agency, said that he expected the iodine to dilute rapidly, minimizing the effect on wildlife, and pointed out that fishing had been suspended in the area after the quake and tsunami.

One sign of possible deterioration in the plant itself came at Reactor No. 3. Workers who were trying to connect an electrical cable to a pump in a turbine building next to the reactor were injured when they stepped into water that was found to be significantly more radioactive than normal. On Friday, officials and experts offered conflicting explanations of what had gone wrong — but all pointed to greater damage to the reactor’s systems and more contamination there than officials had indicated earlier.

Two workers were exposed to radiation and burned when water poured over their boots and down around their feet and ankles, officials said. A third worker was wearing higher boots and did not suffer the same exposure.

Like the injured workers, many of those risking their lives are subcontractors of Tokyo Electric Power, who are paid a small daily wage for hours of work in dangerous conditions. In some cases they are poorly equipped and trained for their task.

On Saturday, workers were focused on trying to restore the lighting to Reactor No. 2’s central control room, an important step toward restoring the unit’s cooling system. They were also preparing to pump fresh water on the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 units, after days of spraying with saltwater.

The National Institute of Radiological Sciences said that the radioactivity of the water that the three injured workers had stepped into was 10,000 times the level normally seen in coolant water at the plant. It said that the amount of radiation the workers were thought to have been exposed to in the water was two to six sieverts.

Even two sieverts is eight times the new 250-millisievert annual exposure limit set for workers at Daiichi in the days after the disaster; the previous limit was 100. Tokyo Electric officials said that water with an equally high radiation level had been found in the Reactor No. 1 building, The Associated Press reported.

Skin exposures of two to six sieverts will cause severe burns, according to Dr. David J. Brenner, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University. But if those doses reach the whole body and not just the skin “you’re at a very high risk of dying,” he said.

At a dose of four sieverts, half of the people exposed will die, Dr. Brenner said. But he said that from the information that had been provided, it was not clear whether the dose to the workers reached their skin only, or penetrated their bodies.

Concerns about Reactor No. 3 have surfaced before. Japanese officials said nine days ago that the reactor vessel might have been damaged.

Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director general of the Japan Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, mentioned damage to the reactor vessel on Friday as a possible explanation of how water in the adjacent containment building had become so radioactive.

Michael Friedlander, a former nuclear power plant operator in the United States, said that the presence of radioactive cobalt and molybdenum in water samples taken from the basement of the turbine building raised the possibility of corrosion as a cause.

Both materials typically occur not because of fission, but because of routine corrosion in a reactor and its associated piping over the course of many years of use, he said.

The aggressive use of salt water to cool the reactor and its storage pool for spent fuel may mean that more of these highly radioactive corrosion materials will be dislodged and contaminate the area in the days to come, posing further hazards to repair workers, Mr. Friedlander added.

The contamination of the water in the basement of the turbine building poses a real challenge for efforts to bring crucial cooling pumps and other equipment back into use.

One other major worry about Reactor No. 3 is the mox, or mixed oxide, fuel it uses. It is an especially dangerous blend of reprocessed fuel and can be more radioactive when melted than the pure uranium fuel used in other reactors, experts say.

The news on Friday and the discovery this week of a radioactive isotope in the water supplies of Tokyo and neighboring prefectures punctured the mood of optimism with which the week began, leaving a sense that the battle to fix the damaged plant will be a long one.

No one is being ordered to evacuate the second zone around the plant, officials said, and people may choose to remain, but many have already left of their own accord, tiring of the anxiety and tedium of remaining cooped up as the nuclear crisis simmers just a few miles away. Many are said to be virtual prisoners, with no access to shopping and immobilized by a lack of gasoline.

“What we’ve been finding is that in that area life has become quite difficult,” Noriyuki Shikata, deputy cabinet secretary for Mr. Kan, said in a telephone interview. “People don’t want to go into the zone to make deliveries.”

Mr. Shikata said the question of where those who chose to leave would go was still under consideration. The effort to move people comes at a time when there are already hundreds of thousands of Japanese displaced by the quake and tsunami.

The National Police Agency said Friday that the official death toll from the March 11 quake and tsunami had passed 10,000, with nearly 17,500 listed as missing.

There was some good news. Levels of the radioactive isotope found in Tokyo’s water supply fell Friday for a second day, officials said, dropping to 51 becquerels per liter, well below the country’s stringent maximum for infants.

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Down

threes ...

... ree ree ree ree, ree ree ree ree.
Up, Down, Appendices, Postscript.

---

Brian Gable's cartoons appear regularly in the Globe - one of the few remaining high points there.

I found the Trussels at Politics Daily. They are from Texas: Robert Trussell, a theater critic for the Kansas City Star, from Kingsville; and his wife, Donna, a journalist who grew up in Dallas.

So ... Texans. The last cartoon is telling. Their caricature of Obama is interesting - I like those Betty Boop lips; but what gets my attention are the (three) issues that concern them: 1. End the wars, 2. Redistribute wealth, and 3. Close Guantanamo.

Seems a strange selection ... (?) ... must be something to do with Texas.

Then there is this Liberal 'attack' ad. "DECEIT, ABUSE, CONTEMPT," they say.

There is no doubt at all about the deceit and contempt. But it leaves me wondering just exactly what constitutes abuse to a cringeing dog? To do with the Liberals wanting to see things in threes maybe? Some strange k-k-Canadian k-k-Cabbala sensibility? Is that it?

---

Photos of L'Afua by Sylvie Blum.

I posted these pictures last week - and then at the last moment took them down. What I said (I could be wrong but I don't think an assault will take L'Afua entirely unprepared. Woe betide any who might try it.) didn't seem right ... murky.

So I clipped them out, but after a week of thinking about it ... I still don't have much to say beyond that.

There is nothing pornographic here, just because she is naked. She is admirable: strong, self-posessed, powerful, expressive, fearless ... a better example for 10 year-old girls such as Maria Aragon (maybe?) than some Lady Gaga zero. I would say so, for my daughter and grand-daughters at least.

Who can say? No certainty here. Nothing left but images plucked from the Internet and wild guesses.

---

I will spare you the hand-wringing over the human victims of this tragedy - in their tens and hundreds of thousands. Just consider that it is snowing in Japan these days ...

In the NYT they call it a 'Dearth of Candor' ... a smattering of political history, a hint of capitalist command & control, bureaucratic structures failing under stress.

Germany has immediately hit the pause button. The United States, UK, Canada, and Ontario have immediately begun weaseling. K-k-Canadians are so forthright & candid, you have to love them for it ... up pops this Globe editorial, seconded by no less than George Monbiot, presenting the self-interested bourgeois view in all of its gorgeous & egregious splendour. So we know exactly what they are thinking; or, since it's not thinking (obviously), exactly what they think they are thinking. The NYT editorial is more reserved, but is running down the same track - to be clear, that would be the 'to hell in a handbasket' track. You can hear the ghost of Gaia, James Lovelock, applauding. Even Gwynne Dyer is ditto-ing - admitting the intractable waste problem and then calling reservations about nuclear power 'superstition'. And here I thought Gwynne Dyer was a smart guy - I guess the fatness I saw when he shared the stage with Elizabeth May was what it looked like - fat.

Why do I say 'obviously' above? Simple. Because no one has any clear idea of what to do with the waste (after fifty and more years thinking about it). Doh!?

This model, anonymous [not, Oluwatoyin Pyne] too, but with a ring in her nose, is presented by Kwesi Abbensetts. What does she think about it all I wonder?

But really, most of us know next to diddley-squat nothing. I cannot make sense of millisieverts (mSv) and millisieverts per hour and Grays (Gy) and Roentgens (R, rem) and the rest, or the subtle differences between Iodine-131 and Cesium-137, or where the Plutonium-238 thru 244 goes, or where the steel goes when they get around to decommissioning - India one presumes, for dilution and recycling, or maybe into bullets (to replace spent Uranium, is that it?).

Radiation levels in Tokyo are 20 times 'normal' background. What does that mean? Radiation levels in Lake Ontario are double what they were 10 (?) years ago. What does that mean?

At first it was the Japanese bureaucrats & industrialists & politicians who were saying nothing about what they probably did not know anyway; now it is the Americans with their more-or-less accurate spy-plane & satellite data who are not saying much.

Japanese spinach is increasingly radioactive apparently - Lookout Popeye!

Oh and here's Ted Gruetzner of Ontario Power Generation (OPG) who tells us there is no reason for concern, none at all, none whatsoever, over the swimming pool-full of Tritium laced water they accidentally dumped into Lake Ontario this week (last week?). And they're so sorry they waited so long to tell us. By my count this kind of 'accident' happens once or twice every year - every day according to some reports.

And this is Don Terry, another spokesman for OPG, saying about the same ... "There's no problem here ev'ree-budee, nope nope nope. Please put down the weapons, clear the area, and return to your houses."

You can catch their act here at CTV, and on YouTube.

How can anyone believe a word these people say? What planet do they inhabit? What fucking language is it that are they speaking?

Smug Spineless & Supercilious Twits!
Dipshit Mealy-Mouthed Weasels!
(dipshit and mealy-mouthed are in the OED in case you don't know what these words mean)

And yet another unit enters the fray; what is a Becquerel (Bq)? And how many of them per litre am I getting in my drinking water?

Wikipedia tells me "Naturally occurring tritium is extremely rare on Earth, where trace amounts are formed by the interaction of the atmosphere with cosmic rays." So how then did we get to have an 'acceptable' level of release of Tritium other than damn well zero? How does the 'acceptable limit' get to be 7,000 bequerels when there used to be just about absolutely no Tritium in the water at all?
Doh!? ... Doh¡¿   WTF?

When the shit hits the fan they will all just say it was "an unprecedented sequence of natural events" - God did it.

A-and the last word on nuclear risks goes to The Onion.

---

Brett Gundlock made portraits of twenty of the G20 prisoners arrested last summer. Ten of them are displayed at the Communication Art Gallery, a tiny room near the corner of Bathurst and Harbord streets in Toronto watched over by a pleasant & articulate young woman - worth a visit.

About a thousand people were plucked off the streets of this city last summer, almost every last one of them entirely innocent. They were dragged to a (temporary?) concentration camp by thugs disguised as police officers. Eight months ago, nine months ago, and Bill Blair, mein scheisse kopf führer Chief of Police, still has damn-all nothing to say about it ... here's a question for y'all: Just how long does gestation take in k-k-Canada?

Catarina Efigénia Sabino Eufémia was murdered by police in 1954. Who cares? It was a long time ago. The son of a bitch who did it, a lieutenant no less, was never tried.

I am left wondering ... if all of it simply means nothing at all. I can't find a way yet to walk around Suzuki's remark that we have been at it for fifty years and things are getting worse.

Whatever.

I watched V For Vendetta again. I didn't get it the first time, nor this time neither; it is not intended to be 'gotten' maybe, if indeed anything is intended. How skinny is Natalie Portman at all? But I bet she is a plump little butterball baleboste by the time she is 60.

"If he will not other wayes confesse, the gentle tortures are to be first usid unto him, & sic per gradus ad ima tenditur," (King James I, referring to Guy Fawkes, November 1605) and "A penny for the Old Guy," (T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men, 1925, referring to god knows what.)

This poem has been posted here before, but since it seems to require 15 minutes or so to find using the state-of-the-art search tools provided ... here it is again:

Nothing has been broken         though one of the links of the chain is a blue butterfly Here he was attacked         They smiled as they came and retired baffled with blue dust The banks so familiar with metal         they made for the wings The thick vaults fluttered The pretty girls advanced         their fingers cupped They bled from the mouth as though struck The jury asked for pity         and touched and were electrocuted by the blue antennae A thrust at any link         might have brought him down but each of you aimed at the blue butterfly

Nada se partiu         ainda que um dos elos da corrente fosse uma borboleta azul Aqui o cercaram         Sorriam ao chegar e em retirada confundidos pela poeira azul Mesmo os bancos tão íntimos do metal         que usaram nas asas suas espessas arcadas estremeceram Lindas jovens avançavam         seus dedos como ventosas Suas bocas sangravam como se estivessem feridas O júri pedia clemencia         tocava e era eletrocutado pelas antenas azuis Um ataque em qualquer elo         poderia tê-lo abatido mas cada um de vocês mirava a borboleta azul

I have posted the tensegrity photograph once or twice before too - it turns out to have been taken by Hiroshi Watanabe (here), and a copy of the contact print showed up as well. Taken in Parque El Arbolito, Quito, Ecuador. Here is another photo of the structure.

Aretha is still the queen of soul; and if you listen carefully you will hear the "ree ree ree ree, ree ree ree ree" there in the background, not in triplets ... ok.

Be well gentle reader.

---

Postscript:

There is news from Brasil (here and here) ... but it will have to wait.

In the meantime, the New York Times is getting ready to charge for access: $15/month by the looks of it. A watershed moment. I think I will pay the price.

The Globe and Mail has sunk so low, particularly on the science-related issues that matter most to me; renewable energy, climate change, nuclear energy; and while the NYT may very well be no less bourgeois in its collective sensibility ... they do seem to be capable of moderating comments effectively. I wonder how they do it?

Time and well past time for the Globe to take down this masthead: "The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures." Junius.

This is not a sudden decision; arbitrary maybe but not sudden. I stopped subscribing several years ago - when they fired Edward Greenspon. And I have noted the departures of such stalwarts as Rick Salutin and more-or-less humble citizens such as Alan Burke.

They should lose the masthead; but in the same way that I always viewed Richard Nixon as a perfectly fitting President for the United States, a kind of epitome, I think they should keep the sobriquet k-k-"Canada's National Newspaper" - I'll give Phillip Crawley & John Stackhouse just exactly that much.

---

Appendices:

1. Dearth of Candor From Japan’s Leadership, Hiroko Tabuchi & Ken Belson & Norimitsu Onishi, March 16 2011.

2. The nuclear risk merits actions, but not global shutdowns, Globe Editorial, March 14 2011.

3. Japan nuclear crisis should not carry weight in atomic energy debate, George Monbiot, March 16 2011.

4. Nuclear Energy Advocates Insist U.S. Reactors Completely Safe Unless Something Bad Happens, The Onion, March 17 2011.

5. Early Questions After Japan, NYT Editorial, March 17 2011.

6. Nuclear power debate amid Japan crisis ruled by superstition, Gwynne Dyer, March 17 2011.

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Dearth of Candor From Japan’s Leadership, Hiroko Tabuchi & Ken Belson & Norimitsu Onishi, March 16 2011.

TOKYO — With all the euphemistic language on display from officials handling Japan’s nuclear crisis, one commodity has been in short supply: information.

When an explosion shook one of many stricken reactors at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on Saturday, power company officials initially offered a typically opaque, and understated, explanation.

“A big sound and white smoke” were recorded near Reactor No. 1, the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power, announced in a curt memo. The matter “was under investigation,” it added.

Foreign nuclear experts, the Japanese press and an increasingly angry and rattled Japanese public are frustrated by government and power company officials’ failure to communicate clearly and promptly about the nuclear crisis. Pointing to conflicting reports, ambiguous language and a constant refusal to confirm the most basic facts, they suspect officials of withholding or fudging crucial information about the risks posed by the ravaged Daiichi plant.

The sound and white smoke on Saturday turned out to be the first in a series of explosions that set off a desperate struggle to bring four reactors under control after their cooling systems were knocked out by the earthquake and tsunami.

Evasive news conferences followed uninformative briefings as the crisis intensified over the past five days. Never has postwar Japan needed strong, assertive leadership more — and never has its weak, rudderless system of governing been so clearly exposed. With earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis striking in rapid, bewildering succession, Japan’s leaders need skills they are not trained to have: rallying the public, improvising solutions and cooperating with powerful bureaucracies.

“Japan has never experienced such a serious test,” said Takeshi Sasaki, a political scientist at Gakushuin University. “At the same time, there is a leadership vacuum.”

Politicians are almost completely reliant on Tokyo Electric Power, which is known as Tepco, for information, and have been left to report what they are told, often in unconvincing fashion.

In a telling outburst, the prime minister, Naoto Kan, berated power company officials for not informing the government of two explosions at the plant early Tuesday morning.

“What in the world is going on?” Mr. Kan said in front of journalists, complaining that he saw television reports of the explosions before he had heard about them from the power company. He was speaking at the inauguration of a central response center of government ministers and Tepco executives that he set up and pointedly said he would command.

The chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency said late Tuesday in a press conference in Vienna that his agency was struggling to get timely information from Japan about its failing reactors, which has resulted in agency misstatements.

“I am asking the Japanese counterparts to further strengthen, to facilitate, communication,” said the agency’s chief, Yukiya Amano. A diplomat in Vienna familiar with the agency’s operations echoed those sentiments.

“It’s so frustrating to try to get good information” from the Japanese, the diplomat said, speaking on the condition of anonymity so as not to antagonize officials there.

The less-than-straight talk is rooted in a conflict-averse culture that avoids direct references to unpleasantness. Until recently, it was standard practice not to tell cancer patients about their diagnoses, ostensibly to protect them from distress. Even Emperor Hirohito, when he spoke to his subjects for the first time to mark Japan’s surrender in World War II, spoke circumspectly, asking Japanese to “endure the unendurable.”

There are also political considerations. In the only nation that has endured an atomic bomb attack, acute sensitivity about radiation sickness may be motivating public officials to try to contain panic — and to perform political damage control. Left-leaning news outlets have long been skeptical of nuclear power and of its backers, and the mutual mistrust led power companies and their regulators to tightly control the flow of information about nuclear operations so as not to inflame a spectrum of opponents that includes pacifists and environmentalists.

“It’s a Catch-22,” said Kuni Yogo, a former nuclear power planner at Japan’s Science and Technology Agency. He said that the government and Tepco “try to disclose only what they think is necessary, while the media, which has an antinuclear tendency, acts hysterically, which leads the government and Tepco to not offer more information.”

The Japanese government has also decided to limit the flow of information to the public about the reactors, having concluded that too many briefings will distract Tepco from its task of bringing the reactors under control, said a senior nuclear industry executive.

At a Tepco briefing on Wednesday, tempers ran high among reporters. Their questions focused on the plumes of steam seen rising from Daiichi’s Reactor No. 3, but there were few answers.

“We cannot confirm,” an official insisted. “It is impossible for me to say anything at this point,” another said. And as always, there was an effusive apology: “We are so sorry for causing you bother.”

“There are too many things you cannot confirm!” one frustrated reporter replied in an unusually strong tone that perhaps signaled that ritual apologies had no place in a nuclear crisis.

Yukio Edano, the outspoken chief cabinet secretary, has been one voice of relative clarity. But at times, he has seemed unable to make sense of the fast-evolving crisis. And even he has spoken too ambiguously for foreign news media.

On Wednesday, Mr. Edano told a press conference that radiation levels had spiked because of smoke billowing from Reactor No. 3 at Fukushima Daiichi, and that all staff members would be temporarily moved “to a safe place.” When he did not elaborate, some foreign reporters, perhaps further confused by the English translator from NHK, the national broadcaster, interpreted his remarks as meaning that Tepco staff members were leaving the plant.

From CNN to The Associated Press to Al Jazeera, panicky headlines shouted that the Fukushima Daiichi plant was being abandoned, in stark contrast to the calm maintained by Japanese media, perhaps better at navigating the nuances of the vague comments.

After checking with nuclear regulators and Tepco itself, it emerged that the plant’s staff members had briefly taken cover indoors within the plant, but had in no way abandoned it.

The close links between politicians and business executives have further complicated the management of the nuclear crisis.

Powerful bureaucrats retire to better-paid jobs in the very industries they once oversaw, in a practice known as “amakudari.” Perhaps no sector had closer relations with regulators than the country’s utilities; regulators and the regulated worked hand in hand to promote nuclear energy, since both were keen to reduce Japan’s heavy reliance on fossil fuels.

Postwar Japan flourished under a system in which political leaders left much of the nation’s foreign policy to the United States and domestic affairs to powerful bureaucrats. Prominent companies operated with an extensive reach into personal lives; their executives were admired for their roles as corporate citizens.

But over the past decade or so, the bureaucrats’ authority has been greatly reduced, and corporations have lost both power and swagger as the economy has floundered.

Yet no strong political class has emerged to take their place. Four prime ministers have come and gone in less than four years; most political analysts had already written off the fifth, Mr. Kan, even before the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster.

Two years ago, Mr. Kan’s Japan Democratic Party swept out the virtual one-party rule of the Liberal Democratic Party, which had dominated Japanese political life for 50 years.

But the lack of continuity and inexperience in governing have hobbled Mr. Kan’s party. The only long-serving group within the government is the bureaucracy, which has been, at a minimum, mistrustful of the party.

“It’s not in their DNA to work with anybody other than the Liberal Democrats,” said Noriko Hama, an economist at Doshisha University.

Neither Mr. Kan nor the bureaucracy has had a hand in planning the rolling residential blackouts in the Tokyo region; the responsibility has been left to Tepco. Unlike the orderly blackouts in the 1970s, the current ones have been carried out with little warning, heightening the public anxiety and highlighting the lack of a trusted leader capable of sharing information about the scope of the disaster and the potential threats to people’s well-being.

“The mistrust of the government and Tepco was already there before the crisis, and people are even angrier now because of the inaccurate information they’re getting,” said Susumu Hirakawa, a professor of psychology at Taisho University.

But the absence of a galvanizing voice is also the result of the longstanding rivalries between bureaucrats and politicians, and between various ministries that tend to operate as fiefdoms.

“There’s a clear lack of command authority in the current government in Tokyo,” said Ronald Morse, who has worked in the Defense, Energy and State Departments in the United States and in two government ministries in Japan. “The magnitude of it becomes obvious at a time like this.”

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The nuclear risk merits actions, but not global shutdowns, Globe Editorial, March 14 2011.

Practically alone among nations, the people of Japan know firsthand the terrible consequences of splitting the atom. As they grieve the thousands dead and the destroyed communities from another, natural, disaster, there are new concerns about nuclear energy – this time, from explosions and partial meltdowns at two of Japan’s nuclear power stations after Friday’s earthquake and tsunami. The situation at the Fukushima reactors is serious, even dire, but it ought not to sound the death knell of nuclear power, or delay the construction of new nuclear facilities.

With little hydroelectric capacity, depleted coal reserves, a still nascent wind and solar industry, a small land area and considerable energy needs, nuclear power makes a lot of sense for Japan. It can usually deliver on its promise of affordable, emissions-light energy to power 25 to 30 per cent of Japan’s electricity needs.

No energy source is perfect, and today it is easy to forget that extracting energy from other sources is demonstrably dangerous in the short run (witness the worldwide death toll, in the thousands annually, from explosions in coal mines and at oil and gas facilities), and, due to global warming exacerbated by the burning of fossil fuels, in the long run.

Even at Fukushima, Japan’s structural engineering skill was on display; it was the tsunami, and not the earthquake, that caused the most damage. But two critical planning oversights – the failure to provide for sufficient back-up power on- and off-site, and the placing of back-up power too close to the shoreline – appear to have contributed to the partial meltdown. Human error, in combination with the rare extremity of Friday’s events, is causing Japan’s nuclear crisis.

But it is important to note that, so far, nothing has happened that could not have been predicted. There are few “unknown unknowns” or unforeseeable risks; indeed, we know the deadly, pervasive risk of the spread of radioactive material, and that awareness is driving the massive containment effort. We just need to account for those risks better.

So rather than forsake nuclear power altogether, all nuclear nations should re-evaluate the risks most germane to their facilities. The situation in Japan is still terrifying and fluid. But it is a good time to recognize that nuclear power is neither a saviour nor an anathema, as proclaimed by competing evangelists. It is a necessary energy source, though not without great risks – and those risks come from both natural and human sources.

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Japan nuclear crisis should not carry weight in atomic energy debate, George Monbiot, March 16 2011.

Nuclear power remains far safer than coal. The awful events in Fukushima must not spook governments considering atomic energy

The nuclear disaster unfolding in Japan is bad enough; the nuclear disaster unfolding in China could be even worse.

"What disaster?", you may ask. The decision taken today by the Chinese government to suspend approval of new atomic power plants. If this suspension were to become permanent, the power those plants would have produced is likely to be replaced by burning coal. While nuclear causes calamities when it goes wrong, coal causes calamities when it goes right, and coal goes right a lot more often than nuclear goes wrong. The only safe coal-fired plant is one which has broken down past the point of repair.

Before I go any further, and I'm misinterpreted for the thousandth time, let me spell out once again what my position is. I have not gone nuclear. But, as long as the following four conditions are met, I will no longer oppose atomic energy.

1. Its total emissions – from mine to dump – are taken into account, and demonstrate that it is a genuinely low-carbon option,

2. We know exactly how and where the waste is to be buried,

3. We know how much this will cost and who will pay,

4. There is a legal guarantee that no civil nuclear materials will be diverted for military purposes.

To these I'll belatedly add a fifth, which should have been there all along: no plants should be built in fault zones, on tsunami-prone coasts, on eroding seashores or those likely to be inundated before the plant has been decommissioned or any other places which are geologically unsafe. This should have been so obvious that it didn't need spelling out. But we discover, yet again, that the blindingly obvious is no guarantee that a policy won't be adopted.

I despise and fear the nuclear industry as much as any other green: all experience hath shown that, in most countries, the companies running it are a corner-cutting bunch of scumbags, whose business originated as a by-product of nuclear weapons manufacture. But, sound as the roots of the anti-nuclear movement are, we cannot allow historical sentiment to shield us from the bigger picture. Even when nuclear power plants go horribly wrong, they do less damage to the planet and its people than coal-burning stations operating normally.

Coal, the most carbon-dense of fossil fuels, is the primary driver of human-caused climate change. If its combustion is not curtailed, it could kill millions of times more people than nuclear power plants have done so far. Yes, I really do mean millions. The Chernobyl meltdown was hideous and traumatic. The official death toll so far appears to be 43 – 28 workers in the initial few months then a further 15 civilians by 2005. Totally unacceptable, of course; but a tiny fraction of the deaths for which climate change is likely to be responsible, through its damage to the food supply, its contribution to the spread of infectious diseases and its degradation of the quality of life for many of the world's poorest people.

Coal also causes plenty of other environmental damage, far worse than the side effects of nuclear power production: from mountaintop removal to acid rain and heavy metal pollution. An article in Scientific American points out that the fly ash produced by a coal-burning power plant "carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy".

Of course it's not a straight fight between coal and nuclear. There are plenty of other ways of producing electricity, and I continue to place appropriate renewables above nuclear power in my list of priorities. We must also make all possible efforts to reduce consumption. But we'll still need to generate electricity, and not all renewable sources are appropriate everywhere. While producing solar power makes perfect sense in north Africa, in the UK, by comparison to both wind and nuclear, it's a waste of money and resources. Abandoning nuclear power as an option narrows our choices just when we need to be thinking as broadly as possible.

Several writers for the Guardian have made what I believe is an unjustifiable leap. A disaster has occurred in a plant that was appallingly sited in an earthquake zone; therefore, they argue, all nuclear power programmes should be abandoned everywhere. It looks to me as if they are jumping on this disaster as support for a pre-existing position they hold for other reasons. Were we to follow their advice, we would rule out a low-carbon source of energy, which could help us tackle the gravest threat the world now faces. That does neither the people nor the places of the world any favours.

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Nuclear Energy Advocates Insist U.S. Reactors Completely Safe Unless Something Bad Happens, The Onion, March 17 2011.

WASHINGTON — Responding to the ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan, officials from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission sought Thursday to reassure nervous Americans that U.S. reactors were 100 percent safe and posed absolutely no threat to the public health as long as no unforeseeable system failure or sudden accident were to occur. "With the advanced safeguards we have in place, the nuclear facilities in this country could never, ever become a danger like those in Japan, unless our generators malfunctioned in an unexpected yet catastrophic manner, causing the fuel rods to melt down," said NRC chairman Gregory Jaczko, insisting that nuclear power remained a clean, harmless energy source that could only lead to disaster if events were to unfold in the exact same way they did in Japan, or in a number of other terrifying and totally plausible scenarios that have taken place since the 1950s. "When you consider all of our backup cooling processes, containment vessels, and contingency plans, you realize that, barring the fact that all of those safety measures could be wiped away in an instant by a natural disaster or electrical error, our reactors are indestructible." Jaczko added that U.S. nuclear power plants were also completely guarded against any and all terrorist attacks, except those no one could have predicted.

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Early Questions After Japan, NYT Editorial, March 17 2011.

As Japan’s nuclear crisis unfolds, nations around the world are looking at the safety of their nuclear reactors — as they should. But most are also waiting until all the facts are in before deciding whether or how to change their nuclear plans. The Obama administration has vowed to learn from the Japanese experience and incorporate new safety approaches if needed.

That makes sense to us — so long as there is rigorous follow-through. The operator of the stricken plant, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, and the Japanese government have been disturbingly opaque about what is happening at the Fukushima Daiichi complex and about efforts to prevent a meltdown and the potential public threat.

That has deepened anxieties in Japan and around the world and led the United States government to take the extraordinary step of announcing that the damage to at least one of the crippled reactors may be far worse than Tokyo had admitted — and urging Americans there to move further away from the official safety perimeter.

Still, enough is known to begin raising questions about our own nuclear operations. We hope regulators and industry leaders are equally forthcoming about this country’s vulnerabilities and challenges.

One of the first questions is whether current evacuation plans are robust enough. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires plant operators to alert the public within a 10-mile radius if a dangerous plume of radioactivity will be heading their way, and local officials decide whether to order an evacuation. The American Embassy in Japan, based on advice from Washington regulators, has told Americans there to evacuate to a radius of about 50 miles from the Fukushima plant.

Why wouldn’t a worst-case accident here merit the same caution? The difficulty, of course, is that some plants — including Indian Point north of New York City — are within 50 miles of millions of people. Regulators will need to clarify this discrepancy or start coming up with more ambitious evacuation plans.

Regulators need to immediately review their safety analyses of two California plants, which, like the Fukushima plant, are located on the coast and near geological faults and might theoretically face the double calamity of an earthquake and tsunami.

The type of reactors used at the Fukushima plant — made by the General Electric Company, they are known as Mark 1 boiling-water reactors — have long been known to have weak containment systems. In Japan, they appear to have been ruptured by explosions of escaping hydrogen. American regulators will need to determine whether similar reactors in this country are vulnerable and whether modifications in newer versions have made them sufficiently safe.

The stricken Japanese complex housed six reactors in close proximity; explosions, fires and radiation spread damage among four of them and has made rescue efforts harder. Regulators will need to look at whether American nuclear plants with multiple reactors are vulnerable to the same cascading effects. In recent days, a new danger has emerged in the spent fuel pools adjacent to the reactors. At least one has apparently lost its cooling water and another is cracked and possibly losing water. If the fuel catches fire, it could spew radiation over a large area. Regulators here may need to expedite the removal of some spent fuel from pools to dry storage in casks.

So far, the all-important lesson would seem to be: have sufficient emergency power at hand to keep cooling water circulating in the reactors to prevent a meltdown.

The Japanese reactors seem to have survived one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded without major structural damage. The crisis developed because the plant lost electrical power from the grid and the tsunami knocked out its backup diesel generators. American regulators must ensure that all nuclear plants have enough mobile generators or other backup power in place if their first two lines of defense are disabled.

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Nuclear power debate amid Japan crisis ruled by superstition, Gwynne Dyer, March 17 2011.

Suppose that a giant hydro dam had crumbled under the impact of the biggest earthquake in a century and sent a wave of water racing down some valley in northern Japan. Imagine that whole villages and towns had been swept away, and that 10,000 people were killed — an even worse death toll than that caused by the tsunami that hit the coastal towns.

Would there be a great outcry worldwide, demanding that reservoirs be drained and hydro dams shut down? Of course not. Do you think we are superstitious savages? We are educated, civilized people, and we understand the way that risk works.

Okay, another thought experiment. Suppose that three big nuclear power reactors were damaged in that same monster earthquake, leading to concerns about a meltdown and a massive release of radiation—a new Chernobyl. Everybody within a 20-kilometre radius of the plant was evacuated, but in the end there were only minor leakages of radiation, and nobody was killed.

Well, that was a pretty convincing demonstration of the safety of nuclear power, wasn’t it? Well, wasn’t it? You there in the loincloth, with the bone through your nose. Why are you looking so frightened? Is something wrong?

In Germany, tens of thousands of protesters demonstrated against nuclear power last Saturday (March 12), and Chancellor Angela Merkel suspended her policy of extending the life of the country’s nuclear power stations until 2036. She conceded that, following events in Japan, it was not possible to “go back to business as usual”, meaning that she may return to the original plan to close down all 17 of Germany’s nuclear power plants by 2020.

In Britain, energy secretary Chris Huhne took a more measured approach: “As Europe seeks to remove carbon based fuels from its economy, there is a long term debate about finding the right mix between nuclear energy and energy generated from renewable sources....The events of the last few days haven’t done the nuclear industry any favours.” I wouldn’t invest in the promised new generation of nuclear power plants in Britain either.

And in the United States, Congressmen Henry Waxman and Ed Markey (Democratic), who cosponsored the 2009 climate bill, called for hearings into the safety and preparedness of America’s nuclear plants, 23 of which have similar designs to the stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan.

The alleged “nuclear renaissance” of the past few years was always a bit of a mirage so far as the West was concerned. China and India have big plans for nuclear energy, with dozens of reactors under construction and many more planned. In the United States, by contrast, there was no realistic expectation that more than four to six new reactors would be built in the next decade even before the current excitements.

The objections to a wider use of nuclear power in the United States are mostly rational. Safety worries are a much smaller obstacle than concerns about cost and time: nuclear plants are enormously expensive, and they take the better part of a decade to license and build. Huge cost overruns are normal, and government aid, in the form of loan guarantees and insurance coverage for catastrophic accidents, is almost always necessary.

The cost of wind and solar power is steadily dropping, and the price of natural gas, the least noxious fossil-fuel alternative to nuclear power, has been in free fall. There is no need for a public debate in the United States on the desirability of more nuclear power: just let the market decide. In Europe, however, there is a real debate, and the wrong side is winning it.

The European debate has focussed on shutting down existing nuclear generating capacity, not installing more of it. The German and Swedish governments may be forced by public opinion to revive the former policy of phasing out all their nuclear power plants in the near future, even though that means postponing the shut-down of highly polluting coal-fired power plants. Other European governments face similar pressures.

It’s a bad bargain. Hundreds of miners die every year digging the coal out of the ground, and hundreds of thousands of other people die annually from respiratory diseases caused by the pollution created by burning it. In the long run, hundreds of millions may die from the global warming that is driven in large part by greenhouse emissions from coal-fired power plants. Yet people worry more about nuclear power.

It’s the same sort of mistaken assessment of risk that caused millions of Americans to drive long distances instead of flying in the months just after 9/11. There were several thousand excess road deaths, while nobody died in the airplanes that had been avoided as too dangerous. Risks should be assessed rationally, not emotionally.

And here’s the funny thing. So long as the problems at Fukushima Daiichi do not kill large numbers of people, the Japanese will not turn against nuclear power, which currently provides over 30 percent of their electricity and is scheduled to expand to 40 percent. Their islands get hit by more big earthquakes than anywhere else on Earth, and the typhoons roar in regularly off the Pacific. They understand about risk.

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