Fukushima - IAEA You Couldn't Make It Up: But They Just Did

Fukushima Diaichi, I will have you know, is not an unprecedented nuclear disaster on a global scale, but rather a ''unique opportunity.''

The IAEA mission urges the international nuclear community to take advantage of the unique opportunity created by the Fukushima accident to seek to learn and improve worldwide nuclear safety.

Words we can only attribute to whore turned brothel keeper, (it's just a mild strain of syphilis) shill for the nuclear industry, ''team leader Mike Weightman, the United Kingdom's Chief Inspector of Nuclear Installations.''

The summary below is courtesy of The Register, but one must read the full interim report, where we are offered such gems as this:

The Japanese Government’s longer term response to protect the public,
including evacuation, has been impressive and extremely well organized. A suitable and timely follow-up programme on public and worker exposures and health monitoring would be beneficial.

And if you believe that, I have a bridge I want to sell you.

But for me, what really takes the biscuit and has all the subtlety of a turd in a swimming pool, is this little line of encouragement that can be found at the foot of the IAEA's roundup page. (Not to be confused with the IAEA's full interim report.)

(Note to Media: We encourage you to republish these stories and kindly request attribution to the IAEA).

No kidding, how very kind of you.

IAEA: Handling of Fukushima has been exemplary
No one harmed, nothing suppressed, normal life to resume
By Lewis Page
3rd June 2011

A preliminary report by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency has stated that the response to the Fukushima nuclear incident was "exemplary" and that nobody has been harmed by radiation exposure resulting from it.

The report was drafted by an IAEA fact-finding team which has just completed a visit to Japan. The team was led by Mike Weightman, the UK Chief Inspector of Nuclear Installations – Britain's top nuclear regulator.

The IAEA team give a brief account of the events of the earthquake – which the affected powerplants resisted without difficulty, despite it being far stronger than they were designed to withstand – and the following tsunami, which caused serious damage at Fukushima Dai'ichi. Only one backup diesel generator survived the enormous wave, at 14m high more than twice as tall as the plant's defences could take.

Now that the situation at the plant has stabilised and investigations inside the reactor buildings have been undertaken, it appears that fuel elements in the worst-hit reactors actually melted down quite soon after most of their cooling equipment was knocked out. This situation is usually assumed to be catastrophic – the very word "meltdown" has come to mean "a rapid or disastrous decline or collapse" – but in fact, apart from putting the reactors beyond economic repair, it has had no serious consequences (as was also the case at Three Mile Island).

As the IAEA notes:

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

The preliminary report goes on to praise the way the plant staff handled the crisis:

The response on the site by dedicated, determined and expert staff, under extremely arduous conditions has been exemplary and resulted in the best approach to securing safety given the exceptional circumstances.

The operations of the incident command and support base, set up at the nearby "J-Village" football training centre, are particularly highly praised for the careful management of the various workers based there. The careful Japanese practice of having hardened emergency-response centres on site from which to conduct operations during a crisis is also recommended to other nuclear operators worldwide.

The IAEA team bluntly contradicts the many suggestions from the media and anti-nuclear campaigners that information on the incident was or is being withheld or suppressed by the Japanese authorities, or by plant operator TEPCO.

During the IAEA mission, the team of nuclear experts received excellent co-operation from all parties, receiving information from many relevant Japanese ministries, nuclear regulators and operators ...

The Japanese Government, nuclear regulators and operators have been extremely open in sharing information and answering the many questions of the mission.

Weightman and his team add that efforts should now be directed at allowing local people to return to their homes and get on with their business. In general the Japanese authorities exercised commendable restraint in the face of overseas suggestions that the evac zone should be enlarged, but it did in the end embark on some compulsory evacuations that were hard to justify on safety grounds. The IAEA seems to suggest that it will be feasible to clean up any long-lasting contamination in the area - for instance from radioisotopic caesium, whose presence resulted in areas of farmland being abandoned following Chernobyl.

The report says:

The planned road-map for recovery of the stricken reactors is important ... It should be seen as part of a wider plan that could result in remediation of the areas off site affected by radioactive releases to allow people evacuated to resume their normal lives. Thus demonstrating to the world what can be achieved in responding to such extreme nuclear events.

In other words, it appears that in the IAEA's opinion not only will nobody be radiologically harmed by the Fukushima incident, but it ought to be possible to ensure that normal life – living, working, farming etc – can resume in the evacuation zone. TEPCO has already stated that it expects to restart two of the Fukushima reactors in due course (both Three Mile Island and Chernobyl resumed operation as power stations following their accidents, too).

A fuller report will be delivered at a summit conference in Vienna later this month. For now the preliminary document and accompanying information can be found here on the IAEA website. The Register