Earthlife Africa's Saliem Fakir has a long piece about how it was the 'unknown unknowns' that caused the disaster at Fukushima. http://www.polity.org.za/article/japans-nuclear-crisis-shows-up-the-unknown-unknowns-2011-05-13
He is wrong, of course. For instance, he says "Nobody expected the reactor fuel would leak radiation so quickly owing to cool water not being able to get into the reactor after most of it had evaporated in the essential stages." What does Fakir think they provided emergency generators at a power station for?? Everyone expected that the reactor fuel would fail if cooling failed. The designers did their best to ensure that cooling would not fail. The tsunami proved them wrong.
And then he stoops to guilt by association - "And the Japanese economy lost close to $300-billion in the first few weeks of the disaster." That was the result of the tsunami, NOT the result of the nuclear incident. Soon we will be told that over 10 000 died at Fukushima.
Finally he moves into the prophet mode - "The long-term damage is significant. The area around the disaster won’t be habitable for decades." How does he know? The accident happened in March; the levels of radiation in the present exclusion zone have fallen nearly to background over much of the area.
Long term gloom is so very easy to predict - the prophet is dead by the time his falsehoods become apparent.
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