Fukushima's real lessons

Yesterday, I referred to a Straits Times blooper for which it carried a correction. Well, Today gets its turn to be cited today. I just wonder if it will carry a correction in the next few days.

On page 8 (23 March), the story headlined "Minister Mah's commentaries in TODAY now feature in book" has this picture of a book cover with its title "Reflections on Housing a Nation" clearly visible.

But the story itself said:

"From concerns about rising flat prices to options for home buyers; these are among some of the issues addressed by Mr Mah Bow Tan in a new book...

"Reflections of a Nation, which was released yesterday..."

So what happened! A number of sharp eyes must have seen the page proof at the editorial stage, yet no one spotted this glaring error in the text.

Anywhere, for those who want to read this book online, the story gives its link:

http://www.mnd.gov.sg/Reflections%20on%20Housing%20a%20Nation/

The above brickbat for Today aside, I have a bouquet for it. A blog article it published on page 22 is, I feel,  worth reproducing here:

"A physicist speaks out against the witch-burning" -- by Peter Heller

There is no place on Earth I would rather be right now than at Fukushima — right in the atomic power plant, at the centre of the event. I say this because I am a physicist and there is no other place that could be more exciting and interesting for a physicist.

There were times in history when ignorance and cowardice overshadowed human life. Religious dogma, like the Earth being the centre of the universe, or creationism, forbade people to question. The forbiddance of opening a human body and examining it prevented questions from being answered. Today these mediaeval rules appear backward and close-minded. We simply cannot imagine this way of thinking could have any acceptance.

But over recent days, I have grown concerned that we are headed again for such dark times. Hysterical and sensationalist media reporting, paired with a remarkably stark display of ignorance of technical and scientific
interrelations and the attempt by a vast majority of journalists to fan the public’s angst and opposition to nuclear energy — pure witch-burning disguised as modernity.

So it fills me with sadness and anger on how the work of the giants of physics is now being dragged through the mud, how the greatest scientific discoveries of the 20th century are being redefined and criminalised.

The current debate in Germany is also a debate on freedom of research. The stigmatisation and ostracism of nuclear energy, the demand for an immediate stop of its use, is also the demand for the end of its research
and development. Stopping nuclear energy is nothing less than rejecting the legacy of Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr and all others. It is tantamount to scrapping it, labelling it as dangerous — all in a fit of ignorance.

The media suggests a nuclear catastrophe, a mega-meltdown and that the apocalypse has already begun. It is almost as if the 10,000 deaths in Japan were actually victims of nuclear energy and not the earthquake or the tsunami.

Here again one has to remind us that Fukushima was first hit by an unimaginable 9.0 earthquake and then by a massive 10m wave of water just an hour later. As a result, the facility no longer found itself in a highly technological area but surrounded by a desert of rubble. All around the power plant the infrastructure, residential areas, traffic routes, energy and communication networks are simply no longer there. They were wiped out.

Yet, after an entire week, the apocalypse still has not come to pass.

Only relatively small amounts of radioactive materials have leaked out and have had only a local impact. If one considers the pure facts exclusively, i.e. only the things we really know, then it exposes the unfounded interpretations of scientific illiterates in the media. One can only arrive to one conclusion: This sorrowful state will remain so.

In truth, this does not show that the ideologically motivated, fear-laden admonitions and warnings were correct. Fukushima illustrates that we are indeed able to control atomic energy. Fukushima shows that we can master it even when natural disasters beyond planning befall us.

There is no other place at the moment where so much can be learned about atomic energy, which keeps our world together and the technical possibilities to benefit from it. Fukushima will show us possibilities on how to use the direct conversion of matter into energy in a better and safer way, something that Einstein and others could have only dreamed of.

This is an excerpt of a translation from a blogpost in German by Dr Peter Heller, a trained astronomer and physicist who co-runs the Science Skeptical Blog at www.science-skeptical.de/blog. The English translation was published at leading science blog wattsupwiththat.com.