Fukushima reactor’s radiation levels are unexpectedly soaring

Definitely the case. Testing residual turbine harnessing. Not only ill-advised, it's so worth pointing out the toxic cultural issues that plagued the chain of command. Namely the chain of command went only one way, it's thought that very few willing to speak up against the ill advised conditions. Poor handover between day and night shift. It sounded by all accounts that the seniors had been given orders to carry out this test, so that's damn well what they were going to do.

Not only did we learn a lot about nuclear safety/poor reactor design, we also learned how Russia would react (largely as expected, tell no-one), learned a few things about cultural issues in safety (TQM people! Kaizen! It works!).

I'd like to think now we'd be beyond the nationalistic cover-ups concerning nuclear development. Unfortunately it seems we're not quite beyond that yet. Companies keeping schtum about risk-factors, nations keeping quiet. Look at Sellafield in the UK and their Technetium-99 output. Ireland and Norway have both had enough.

I'm pro-nuclear, about as pro-nuclear as it gets. But it's time we learned from the past and looked toward the scientific value of globalised mind-share. If something is about to go bang, lets discuss it before we have to get international inspectors in to examine the wreckage.

/r/worldnews Thread Parent Link - sciencealert.com