The broad strokes are known, while the details are sketchy. The cover-up consists of TEPCO and the government issuing a steady stream of tut-tuts and there-theres trying to reassure a populace being poisoned that there’s nothing wrong, or not much, or it’s getting better, or whatever the feel-good phrase of the day is.
The government has been honest in some refreshing ways, but don’t expect cheerleading for only lying part of the time. There’s a certain amount of half-full, half-empty debate as to how lucky we are that certain aspects of this disaster may have prevented or limited certain other aspects. That’s great, but with how difficult it is to get straight facts from TEPCO and the government of Japan (which our acronym-loving government refers to as GOJ), these debates are largely meaningless. Of course, that would be an excellent way to discourage criticism, using contradictory data as a smokescreen. If you are confident that nobody will call you on it as a tactic, it makes all sorts of sense.
How hard would it be to clear this up?
[5/11] After gaining access to the interior of n1, TEPCO operators said to have “corrected” #1-A gauge, which was found to be “down-scale” (i.e. core empty). Since temperature is low all over the reactor the fuel is assumed to have completely melted down and reached the bottom of the RPV where it’s kept cool.
As of 6/02 TEPCO keeps on reporting #1-B (half filled core) as well, and no information has been given on what they did to “correct” gauge A.
Those points are from a layman’s blog with the lyrical title FNPP1 Reactor Parameters which takes a balanced view, in my opinion, and seems to do well in maintaining a focus on getting to the bottom of the data. He is referring to this picture:
"A" and "B" are different sets of instruments, measuring the same thing. The little-commented discrepancy for three weeks between 1A and 1B is just plain sloppy. --hbd
It’s not fair to say that this stuff is not rocket science, because compared to nuclear physics, rocket science is child’s play. What is not so complicated are the relationships between temperature, pressure, volume, mass flow rates, and thermal capacities. Even simpler are the facts surrounding containers which hold water and containers which do not.
It is not as though we expect perfection from men. Just competence.
I am glad that todays no-confidence motion was defeated. I am no fan of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ, which is far but not extreme left in American parlance), but the motion brought by the Liberal Democrat Party of Japan (LDP, which is American center with fat tails) was just plain stupid. Not only was it a bad idea politically, but the problems shown by the current bout of idiots running Japan are no worse than when the idiots in the LDP run the place.
Competence is hard to come by, and this means that excuses are a habit, and while this is hardly a uniquely Japanese problem, in relation to Fukushima there is nobody else. And as Tolstoy pointed out that each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, the style of Japanese incompetence is uniquely Japanese, and relies upon a docile, willing acceptance of lies and nonsense by the governed. And Japan may be running out of that willingness. Uncorrected “corrected” graphs like that above are part of the reason why.
I presume it is simple incompetence which causes contradictory readings to be passed for three weeks, after a “correction” and without explaining the remaining discrepancy. This is as opposed to incompetence compounded by malice, wherein the bad data is effectively relied upon as s smokescreen. But it does make you wonder. It is difficult to give these folks the benefit of the doubt when almost everything is doubtful.
The reactor is neither half-full nor half-empty. It is empty, and all the fuel lies in a glowing heap in the flooded drywell beneath it, seeping contamination into the air, the soil, and the water.
That’s a fact.
I am a bit surprised of the use you made of my graphs.
Not that I don’t share your frustration, but I think you are missing part of the “facts”.
The “fact” is TEPCO is dealing with a situation in which most regular instrumentation is broken and they don’t have access to many of the plant’s premises. You may put that down to incompetence, or deliberate information concealing, but personally I just think “they simply don’t know”.
Now for JP people it seems very hard to simply admit “not knowing”, and for normal not scientific/engineering people it seems very hard to accept engineers may simply “not know”.
In Europe one would simply say : “I don’t know but here is my guess”, or maybe just make a guess without warning that is just that, a guess. Then correct the previous guess with a new one whenever more information is coming.
Japanese people seem to prefer to simply not say anything unless they are sure of what they say, and IMO that is basically what TEPCO is doing. Being an European living in Japan I have yet to decide which approach is better, but for sure both are different.
I do wonder though how did you reach the definite and (apparently) certain conclusion that the fuel has pierced the RPV and lies now in the bottom of the drywell though… Myself I still consider even the possibility that TEPCO correction of gaugeA was wrong and the core remains actually half filled as gauge B indicates. At this point the only truth is “nobody knows”.