Nothing To Trust (UPDATED – Wed, 12:00 p.m.)

Here’s an update for Wednesday, March 30.  

[quote=guardia]

My gut feeling is that the media here in Japan is so dramatically downplaying the severity of the situation that all Japanese have already forgotten all about it… I’m guessing it’s the same abroad

Samuelhte

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The news blackout continues into today.

1. The NYTimes only has one article on the front page about the reactors and it’s about how confidence is slipping in TEPCO.  No hard data of any sort, just a filler piece on the communication difficulties.
2. The WSJ has an article on the front about the 3,355x radiation found in the seawater, but absolutely nothing about the isotopes involved and what these would imply.  I am 99% certain that they would indicate a resumption of fission.  My best guess is that reactor #3, which we all saw blow up with our own eyes (at least the secondary containment vessel), is the main culprit here, but it doesn’t really matter.  FISSION is happening.  F.I.S.S.I.O.N.  Fission.  That’s the main story, not how many times background is in the ocean.
3. There’s not a single article – not one – about Japan’s reactor situation on the entire front page of Bloomberg’s on-line edition this morning.  Not one.
4. There is nothing in any of the Japanese press right now that I would constitute as hard data about the true condition of the reactors. No temperature or isotope data to be seen.

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Further, DigitalGlobe’s last released flyover satellite photo was from March 18th, and their story after a week of no releases was “it was cloudy” (Adam called) and that the person responsible for those photo releases was going on vacation for a week.  Well, it’s now a week later and there’s nothing to be seen on their website that’s more recent than the 18th.

There is now ample evidence that fission is happening in at least one, but maybe more, spot(s) at the site.  What happens next is of the utmost importance to an enormous swath of Japan and, by extension the rest of the world.

Perversely, but not really when you understand the effort being expended to prop it up, the US stock market is powering higher in the face of significant GDP downgrades, Japan’s situation and the loss of production capabilities, and the prospect of a serious US budgetary showdown that could result in a suspension of government functions for a while.