Fukushima Daiichi without power - kind of

Last night cooling systems at Fukushima Daiichi malfunctioned, leaving the spent fuel pools of reactors 1, 3 and 4 without circulating cooling water for several hours. TEPCO announced that the problem was due to malfunctioning power distribution boards.

According to what I can make of the NHK news site and the TEPCO press release, cooling has been restored to fuel pools 1 and 4; and TEPCO plans to restore power to spent fuel pool 3 this evening and the shared spent fuel pool tomorrow morning.

While temperatures in the affected pools rose slightly, there has been no increase in radiation.

The NHK 7pm news focused on the gap of 3 hours between the loss of power and the announcement to the media by TEPCO 3 hours later, which is being treated as very suspicious in the Japanese media. Interestingly, it also took 3 hours for the Nuclear Regulation Authority to make an announcement, and there was also, somewhat confusingly, video of the NRA chairman Shunichi Tanaka lamenting the delay.

A TEPCO spokesman said "It was considered that the information should be confirmed before being released to the public."

But this is merely the latest incident in a long list of the minor technical issues that have occurred during the clean up of what is, after all, a major industrial accident. I have to tell you, the TEPCO website is not exciting reading.

Of more interest to the skeptical observer is how the incident is being protrayed. This post by ENE 'news' (read: fearmongering) demonstrates my point nicely. It is merely some phrases from a Kyodo news piece cherry picked to provide an impression of imminent destruction. Let's have a closer look:

Kyodo at 2:29p ET: “Tepco hasn’t been able to work out steps to ensure bringing system back online” at Fukushima Daiichi — No ‘major’ changes in radioactivity

The original Kyodo piece has the words 'As of 1.45 a.m.' added onto the beginning of the sentence, which temporally limits the damage to a technical hiccup, instead of giving the impression that TEPCO has been struggling and failing for an extended period (days? weeks?).

The inverted commas around 'major' lend doubt to the word. They give the impression that TEPCO is fudging or lying, that 'no major changes' may in fact be something much more serious and sinister. Neither that ENE piece or any other repeat later Kyodo observation that radiation readings have not been abnormal in any way.

I could go on for hours about that website. After reading it, I am mostly left with the impression that people are way to uncritical. Is it really too difficult, for example, to find and read the original Kyodo article?