Bureaucratic Incompetence

Here is a bit from an article in the NY Times about Japanese authorities hiding the severity of the nuclear disaster:

The chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave a significantly bleaker appraisal of threat posed by the Japanese nuclear crisis than the Japanese government, saying on Wednesday that the damage at one crippled reactor was much more serious than Japanese officials had acknowledged and advising to Americans to evacuate a wider area around the plant than ordered by the Japanese government.

This is bad news. Not only are the Japanese slow off the mark to handle the tsunami, they are bungling the nuclear disaster. It wouldn't be so bad if it only affected their own people, but this will spread radiation around the world. Luckily, so far, there hasn't been a big explosion to project radiation high up into the atmosphere where it can more easily moved around the world. But none of this is good. Adding official secretiveness and bungling to a bad situation only makes it worse!

From this BoingBoing post, it appears that the US is now preparing for a worst case scenario:

Japan: US to deploy radiation monitoring gear in Japan, Hawaii, Pacific territories

Xeni Jardin at 3:20 PM Wednesday, Mar 16, 2011

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu told Congress on Wednesday that the DoE is attempting to place radiation monitoring equipment in Japan.

The detection system is part of the 17,200 pounds (7,800 kg) of equipment and 39 personnel from the Energy Department sent to Japan, Chu said. The department has also provided equipment to monitor airborne radiation, Chu said.

And separately, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) posted a brief notice on its website yesterday of plans to "work with its federal partners to deploy additional monitoring capabilities to parts of the western U.S. and U.S. territories."

A Democratic Congressional aide on Wednesday told Reuters that additional monitors will be dispatched to the Aleutian Islands, Guam, a U.S. territory, and the state of Hawaii. These monitors will augment the more than 100 monitors already in place in all 50 U.S. states, according to the aide, who asked not to be identified.

Go to the original BoingBoing post to get embedded links.